


And They Were Roommates!

by sunshinemellow



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Banter, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Modern AU, Mutual Pining, OR IS IT, Romance, Roommates, Slow Burn, Snark, same age au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 60,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28824198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinemellow/pseuds/sunshinemellow
Summary: Sakura is a work-obsessed student in her second year of med school and Kakashi is getting his MFA. One rent controlled apartment, two wrecks! Chaos, fluff, and pining ensue.“This doesn’t mean you and I are friends,” she snapped at Kakashi. “Far from it.”He just smiled with his eyes, patting Pakkun’s head. “I hope that changes, Sakura. I think you’re fun.”
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi, Nohara Rin/Uchiha Obito
Comments: 384
Kudos: 358





	1. Chapter 1

Sakura had found the ideal apartment.

Through the sister of the friend of a cousin, she had managed to find a graduating Ph.D. student who had lived in the same two-bedroom apartment for the last seven years. It was rent controlled, shabby but clean, and only a ten-minute walk from campus. In other words, it was basically fictional. She couldn’t sign the lease transfer papers quickly enough, reasoning that it wouldn’t be _that_ difficult to find someone to fill the extra empty room.

Unfortunately, Sakura was beginning to realize her expectations were a little… unreasonable. She had spent her first year in medical school in a dull caffeine-fueled haze. She shared a studio apartment with Ino, who was completing her graduate degree in clinical psychology. Sakura loved Ino dearly, but she quickly realized it was better for the sake of their friendship that they live separately.

Ino liked to wake up early to complete an elaborate self-care and beauty _ritual_ , which Sakura just called obsessive grooming. Sakura stayed up late into the night, drinking stale cups of re-microwaved coffee and confronting her mortality when it hit 5am and she still felt unprepared for that day’s anatomy quiz. (She was beginning to realize that part of medical school was being made to feel constantly unprepared as a motivating factor.)

Ino was also a more social human than Sakura was, and although Sakura was _technically an adult_ , she had never been able to stop herself from pouting childishly when Ino’s friends came over on a Friday night for a healthy and normal social evening that Sakura _should_ have participated in. Sakura always felt like hissing whenever Ino directed gentle and concerned clinical language towards her— _you need to make sure you engage regularly with a social support network_ —but deep down, she knew Ino was right.

There were the other little things too—the dishes left in the sink, the piles of dirty laundry, the usual bad habits that drove roommates insane. It was time for a fresh start, Sakura had decided. Before she and Ino ripped each other’s heads off.

Sakura posted in the university housing Facebook group and started conducting roommate interviews, but she was beginning to realize she was looking for a mythical and perfect roommate that didn’t exist. There had been plenty of undergraduate students interested, but Sakura decided that she felt old and decrepit enough that she would probably have a complete emotional crisis if confronted with _youth_ and _self-discovery_ on a regular basis. She needed another mid-to-early twenties person undergoing the same panic of figuring out how to be a functional and self-sufficient adult.

She met with a few MBA students who seemed too _fun_ to be trusted. She met with another med school student who Sakura had immediately clocked as someone who would never, ever clean anything in the apartment. She met with a computer science grad student who had acted overly superior enough to bring her blood to a boil. She met with a linguistics grad student who had seemed alright until she revealed she had a long-term boyfriend, and would it be fine if he stayed with them for a couple weeks every month? (Without chipping in for rent? Sakura’s internal voice had griped. _Hell no_.)

Sakura was beginning to lose hope, and she knew with the amount of med school debt piling on her back that she could _not_ afford to pay the rent on a two-bedroom apartment by herself. She had one last interview that weekend, and she was basically praying for what was beginning to feel like a miracle.

She was sitting at the little table she had singlehandedly hauled into the apartment from a flea market sale when a knock sounded at the door. Her head shot up from her textbook and she realized she had lost track of time. She glanced at her watch and felt her jaw drop. If this was the person coming by to see the apartment, he was over an hour late. She went over to the door and yanked it open, prepared to deliver a searing lecture that would make him the scapegoat for her frustration with her workload.

“You know, it is super rude of you to be so la—”

She broke off when she realized she was talking to half of a face. She blinked in surprise at the black bandana, then her gaze traveled to the dark grey eyes above it, and then to the mess of—was that _grey_ hair? She stared in consternation. It seemed too _pretty_ to be truly grey. It was really more of a silver, though it would have been nice to live with someone as stressed out as she was.

“Are you going to keep telling me off, or am I allowed to come in?”

Sakura jolted back to herself, realizing that she had been mindlessly staring. She was beginning to fear that medical school had ruined any semblance of social skills she had once possessed.

“Yeah, sure,” she said, disconcerted as she gestured him in. He had asked his question in a dry tone of voice, with something like amusement flickering in his eyes. He was apparently unfazed by the fact the door had been opened to reveal an angry and yelling person. Sakura scowled and followed him back into the apartment.

“Is there a reason you’re wearing something that covers half of your face? I think it’s pretty obvious that this isn’t a bank, and I can tell you now that there isn’t really anything worth stealing here.”

He shuffled into the general living area, peering around himself. “That’s fine, I’m planning on robbing the bank after this. Didn’t want to have to change outfits.” 

Against her will she felt herself crack a smile. A sense of humor was a bonus—most people needed a sense of humor to coexist with her.

“Sorry, I forgot your name,” she said.

“Kakashi.” He looked around the cramped living space that was half-living room and half-kitchen. He made his way over to the window at the far end of the room and gazed out onto the street. “This is nice,” he muttered, gesturing vaguely at the view of the building across from them. “That tree will look nice when it changes colors in a couple weeks.”

Sakura raised her eyebrows. She supposed it wasn’t an odd thing to notice. Maybe she had just been so sucked up in getting through pre-semester material and wrapping up her summer research that the world around her had faded into a blur. She found that she was almost glad he had pointed it out—now it was something to look forward to.

“And you study….” she trailed off in question.

“I’m doing an MFA. I have another few years left.”

Ah, a creative type. Sakura scanned him critically, searching for signs that he would throw unpredictable fits and make messes in the name of his _art_. He was tall and lanky, and he stood with a slight slouch. Judging by what she could see of his face, he was also in his early or mid-twenties, despite his grey hair. He wore clothes that were regular enough—jeans and a baggy black t-shirt with a jacket. He looked like the majority of male grad students wandering around campus; composed but slightly rumpled, as if he had come from a long lecture or spent the previous night buried in some library. He was decidedly normal, except for the bandana.

Sakura began to ask about it again, but then she stopped herself. He had neatly dodged her question earlier with the air of someone who was used to doing so. There was a myriad of personal reasons he might be wearing it—to conceal a birthmark he was insecure about, an old scar perhaps… She felt her bedside manner training kick in, and she decided it wasn’t really any of her business.

She cleared her throat and pulled up the list of questions on her phone. He turned and raised two grey eyebrows at her.

“I have a few questions to make sure we would be compatible living together.”

“By all means, go ahead,” he said, his eyes amused.

“What are your cleaning habits?”

His bandana shifted and she could tell he was smiling underneath it. “I don’t like messes, but I’m not a saint. I have a sensitive nose, so I don’t like things left sitting out or in the sink.” He shrugged. “I’ll pitch in for a deeper clean once a month or more often if that’s something you do.”

Sakura nodded and looked back down at her list. “Do you like having friends over, and if so, how often?”

“No.”

She looked back up at him in surprise. “You do have friends, right?” She flushed when she realized she had asked something a little personal. So what if he didn’t have friends—it just meant more quiet time in the apartment to herself. His eyes gleamed and she wondered if he was teasing her.

“I do have friends, yes, but I like being able to come home to a quiet space. You can’t leave a social event if it’s happening in your apartment.”

Sakura thought that if she had a clipboard, she would have scribbled a very enthusiastic checkmark next to that box. Maybe a couple stars and exclamation points. Sakura wasn’t completely introverted, but med school was turning her into a recluse. She needed quiet time to recharge without worrying about who would be in her space each weekend.

“When do you usually go to bed?”

He raised his eyebrows higher but she just jutted out her chin. She had endured enough sleepy screaming matches with Ino at 4am when she accidentally knocked something over while studying, and she had also known the hell of waking up to someone bustling around to prepare an elaborate breakfast mere hours after she had finally gone to sleep. She needed to know the waking hours of whatever human she ended up living with.

“I’m a night owl, but I try to be asleep before 2am. I typically don’t make a lot of noise though, so—”

“That’s fine,” Sakura cut him off, beginning to feel some hope blooming. He was checking all the main boxes and she was beginning to feel excited. “Do you have a partner or someone who might need to stay here long term?”

“You’re pretty thorough, aren’t you?”

She scowled at him. “What, you’ve never had to deal with someone you live with inviting their significant other over for months at a time?”

“Can’t say I have, but to answer your question, no.”

“One last question. Or, I guess, two last questions.”

The bandana twitched with what she was beginning to think of as his version of a smile. “Go for it.”

“How would you describe your lifestyle, and what do you want in a roommate?”

He leaned on the side of the counter. “Hmmm…” he gazed at the wall for a moment and then shrugged. “My lifestyle is simple. I read, I eat, I sleep, and I spend half the day in classes or workshops. I like coming home to a quiet and comfortable space. As for what I want from a roommate…” His eyes flicked back to her with an appraising look in them. “I want to live with someone who lets me go about my days in peace.”

Sakura had to resist the urge to hurl herself across the small kitchen to hug him. He was perfect—she wouldn’t have to third wheel with the linguistics Ph.D. student and her boyfriend after all.

“That is _great_ ,” she said with an enthusiasm that she might have been embarrassed by if she wasn’t so thrilled. “Absolutely _great_.”

“Can I see the room?”

“Yes, yes,” she said, walking him down the single tiny hallway in the apartment to the door that was directly across from her own.

He opened the door and poked his head inside, glancing around the empty space and bare walls. His eyes stopped on the window that looked out onto a small side yard and the side of the neighboring building. She found that she suddenly wanted to ask if he noticed anything about this window the way he had with the one in the shared living space.

He took a slow step forward. “This is nice,” he said. “West facing window. More light during the evenings.”

She grinned. She was beginning to like this odd man with a somewhat dry and reserved sense of humor. He seemed to notice things that she was either too busy or too stressed to pay attention to, and she wondered if she would get more of these interesting little observations over the course of living with him.

He turned back to her, his gaze darting down to the smile still on her lips and then back to her eyes. “I can move in tomorrow. And you’ll have to remind me, your name is…”

Sakura stuck her hand out, feeling a little silly and old-fashioned but thrilled at the same time. “My name is Sakura.”

He looked at her hair as he shook her hand. “Of course it is,” he said. 

“Yeah, yeah, start planning your jokes now. I’ve literally heard them all.”

He just shrugged. Sakura was beginning to think it was his favorite way of communicating. “As long as you don’t call me old man, I think we’ll get along fine.”

“So your hair is natural,” she asked, curious despite herself. It looked like the silvery hair artsy people tried to achieve with lots of bleach, but the med student in her was trying to come up with allele combinations that could result in such a color.

“Is anything natural?”

She regarded him warily. So he was only of those philosophizing MFA types. Not as bad as the computer science grad student, but still might be a little annoying from time to time. Then his face broke out into amusement, his eyes crinkling at her.

“Just kidding. So, is there anything I need to sign?”

Sakura blinked. “Uh, yeah, I have some new tenant papers in the kitchen. I’ll scan them and send them to the leasing agency tonight.”

She led him back to the kitchen and they sat at the table. She was interested to see that he read very carefully through each line of the five-page leasing contract—she herself had just skimmed for incriminating things and signed in a hurry. Whoops.

“So what are you getting your MFA in?”

“Creative writing,” he said, his eyes still on the paper.

Sakura could not be more thrilled— _books_! There would be no messy art supplies, no loud instrument playing, no theatric monologue rehearsals. Books were literally the quietest thing he could be getting a graduate degree in, and she _loved_ him for it.

“That is _wonderful_ ,” she said, sincerely meaning it for entirely selfish reasons.

He glanced up at her in amusement. “I’m glad you think so. Most people studying the sciences seem to have a bit of a superiority complex.” 

“How did you know I was studying something in the sciences?”

He gestured to her anatomy notes that had been hastily shoved to the side at the other end of the table. “You’re either in med school or you’re very invested in learning how to properly disembowel someone.”

Sakura scowled at her notes and the reminder that tonight would be another long, long evening of cramming her poor brain with more information. “Who says it’s not both,” she muttered under her breath.

He snorted and she looked at him in surprise. He signed the papers with a deft flick of his wrist and handed them back to her, mirth gleaming in his eyes.

“Here’s to hoping that I’m not the first person you disembowel when you finally snap.”

“As long as you don’t leave your dishes in the sink for longer than half a day, I think you should be fine.”

He nodded and stood. “I’ll see you tomorrow then? Probably around twelve?”

“Sounds good,” she said, leading him back out of the apartment. “I would offer to help you move stuff in, but I’ll have to run by my lab at one.”

They exchanged goodbyes and contact information and Sakura shut the door behind herself, feeling both satisfied and surprised. She wondered if she had been a little hasty in offering him the room so quickly.

She realized he had never told her why he had been late, or whether his hair color was actually natural.

She scowled. So what if he was a little sneaky and good at slithering out of personal questions? It would be fine—she just needed someone to read quietly in the second room and pay half the rent while she chugged energy drinks and rammed herself through med school.

Everything would be fine, she decided, as she scanned the lease papers with her phone and typed a quick email to the landlord. He didn’t seem like a serial killer or anything, and he seemed quiet. What else could she ask for in a roommate?

* * *

Sakura’s phone went off at 12:30pm and she sighed in irritation. He was half an hour late—not as late as he had been the day before, but late enough that she had been stressing about how to get him his set of keys before she left for her lab. She jogged down the stairs, running a jittery hand through her hair. She had a meeting with Tsunade to discuss the paper they were trying to get published, and she was afraid that Tsunade wouldn’t like the way she had written her sections.

She dragged the apartment building door open and found herself faced with Kakashi, who had what looked like the end of a very heavy metal bedframe slung over his shoulder. She could see a second person’s shoulder at the other end of the frame.

“Hello,” Kakashi said in a bright tone. “Can you help us navigate up the stairs?”

“You’re late,” she grouched, holding the door open so they could haul the bed inside the building.

“Am I?” he puffed, the only sign of his exertion as he made his way up the stairs. “Hadn’t noticed.”

They made their way down the hall as Sakura jogged ahead to open the apartment door for them. She heard them setting the bed down in what she would now have to think of as Kakashi’s room, and then a brown-haired man with shoulder length hair strolled back out and dusted his hands.

“You can handle the rest, can’t you, Kakashi,” he drawled.

“Very funny, Genma,” Kakashi called from his room.

The man, who was apparently named Genma, swiveled and saw Sakura standing impatiently in the doorway. His gaze traveled over her from head to toe and she had to resist the urge to roll her eyes as a sly and flirtatious smile curled across his face. She had met plenty of men like this in the bars around the university, all with long hair and easy smiles—they were, as she considered them, male equivalents of Ino.

“Well, hello. Kakashi never told me his new roommate would be so pretty. And you are?”

“I’m late, annoyed, and not interested.” Sakura snapped.

Kakashi poked his head back out through his door as Genma guffawed. “Late Annoyed And Not Interested, would you be willing to hold the door open for us when we bring up the desk? It will only take a moment, and then you might have to change your name to just Annoyed And Not Interested.”

Sakura glared but she felt a tug at the corner of her lips. It was a dumb joke, but she was a sucker for stupid puns. “Fine,” she grumbled. “But if I’m late for my meeting, you might need to start calling yourself Skinned Alive.”

She stomped back out of the apartment, but she heard Genma whisper theatrically, “I like her,” while Kakashi just grunted noncommittally. She directed them back up the stairs without incident and checked her phone—12:45. That was fine, if she left now. 

“Here,” she said, unceremoniously snatching Kakashi’s hand and dumping his keys in it. “Big one is for the building, small one is for our apartment. I’ll be back in a couple hours, and unlike you, you can expect me to show up when I said I would.”

He raised his eyebrows but the amusement in his eyes made it clear that he was in no way thrown off by her rudeness.

“Aye, aye, captain. I’ll guard the apartment well in your absence.”

She snorted and smothered a small smile as she turned and left.

* * *

Sakura dragged herself back up the stairs to her apartment, feeling both deliriously happy and exhausted. Tsunade had, against all odds, liked the sections of the paper that Sakura wrote. Of course, even with the approval came feedback, and Sakura had a long night of editing ahead of her. Classes officially started in two weeks, and the sooner she wrapped this all up, the longer of a break she would get.

She let herself into the apartment, half-expecting there to be a giant moving-in mess in the hallway. Everything looked as she had left it and she smiled. He might be chronically late, but at least he was tidy.

Then she heard jingling and the clatter of small claws on wood. She stared blankly as a small pug rounded the corner and trotted up to a point a few feet away from her. Its wrinkled face watched her as if _she_ were the one out of place, and it plopped itself down resolutely, directly in her way. 

“Kakashi,” she heard herself call distantly, wondering if she was hallucinating. “Why is there a dog in here?”

Kakashi’s door swung open and he ambled out. “Ah, I see you’ve met Pakkun.”

Sakura stared down at the small pug. “And what, exactly, is Pakkun doing here?”

Kakashi’s eyes crinkled in a smile, and she could just imagine that underneath his bandana he was wearing a shit-eating grin. “Did I forget to mention? Pakkun is my dog.”

_“Your what?”_

Kakashi leaned on the wall, a hand going to his chin underneath his bandana. “I could have sworn I had mentioned—”

“You absolutely _did not_ ,” she hissed. “I watched you read that whole contract, there are _no pets_ allowed—”

“Hm. I don’t remember that being in there.”

“ _I watched you read it_ ,” she heard herself shriek.

“You know, I’m kind of bad at reading—”

“You’re getting an MFA _in reading_ —”

“And writing,” he said, holding up a finger. “And quite frankly I’m better at the writing—”

“Oh my god,” Sakura said, slumping against the wall as Pakkun continued to stare at her balefully. “We’re going to get kicked out. I’m going to lose this lease and I’m going to have to go back to crying when Ino wakes me up at 6am every morning—”

“Pakkun is a good dog,” Kakashi said, with a new note of seriousness in his voice. “He doesn’t bark or create messes, and he is easy to sneak out in a jacket for walks. He’s lived with me in no-pet apartments for years and no one has ever noticed or said anything.”

Sakura just stared at the small dog, her eyes tracing over its wrinkles and floppy little ears. It was cute, and she had been dreaming about getting a pet when she finally graduated. There was nothing she could do now that it was here, anyways. Kakashi had signed the damn leasing papers and they had been approved.

She felt the anger come back with a searing righteousness. “What if I had lied about having some pet, huh? What if I had a cat that I had just neglected to tell you about?”

“Pakkun likes cats.”

“But what if my cat didn’t like dogs?”

“It would like Pakkun.”

“But what if it didn’t?”

Kakashi shrugged, a mounting amusement growing in his eyes. “Then the cat would have to go.”

_“Like hell my cat would be the one to go—”_

“Sakura,” Kakashi interrupted gently, but with a teasing gleam in his eyes. “You’re becoming concerningly attached to this hypothetical cat. Do you want to adopt a cat? We could go down to the shelter and find one Pakkun gets along with—”

Sakura let out a colorful stream of foul language and Kakashi’s eyebrows shot up. “Wow,” he finally said when she finished, slightly breathless from her tirade but feeling marginally better. “That was impressive, but it is clear that I’ve upset you. How can I make it up to you?”

“You can finish my fucking medical degree for me,” she snapped, stepping carefully around Pakkun and brushing past Kakashi on her way to the kitchen. She yanked open the door to the refrigerator and then deflated when she saw her empty shelves, filled with nothing but sauce jars and a package of thawing tamales that had been frozen six months ago. She felt Kakashi approach behind her and peer cautiously over her shoulder.

“Ah, I see,” he said. Sakura resisted to urge to turn around and punch him. “How about this— once each week, you get to order UberEats with my card. Anything you want, as long as it is less than $20. You can consider it pet rent.”

Sakura turned around and eyed him suspiciously. “Anything I want?”

“As long as it is less than $20. I am in graduate school, too.”

Sakura closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, feeling the beginnings of a vicious headache. She could continue to fight him on this, but she didn’t really have the energy. She might regret it later, but right now she was hungry, and all she wanted was some form of spicy noodles. Besides, she liked dogs.

“Fine,” she said, opening her eyes to find him grinning at her with just his eyes. “This doesn’t mean I forgive you, though. This just means I’m hungry and tired of eating frozen things.”

“I completely understand,” he said, opening his UberEats app and holding his phone out to her. “I promise that Pakkun will grow on you. He’s a good dog.”

Sakura rolled her eyes. “The word of a liar means very little.”

Kakashi just hummed, sauntering off to the hallway where Pakkun was still sitting and scooping him up in his arms. Sakura wondered if it was her imagination, but Pakkun seemed to be looking at her with a much kinder look in his eyes. She cracked a small smile and then scowled when she saw Kakashi smiling triumphantly.

“This doesn’t mean you and I are friends,” she snapped at Kakashi. “Far from it.”

He just smiled with his eyes, patting Pakkun’s head. “I hope that changes, Sakura. I think you’re fun.”

She huffed with exasperation, setting his phone on the counter after ordering dinner and storming off to her room. As she shut the door behind herself, she felt an infuriating grin break across her face, despite her best efforts to smother it.

Kakashi seemed fun, too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for an unwelcome spider being in the apartment! I purposefully do not describe the spider in detail, but if you want to skip to the point where it has been taken care of you can command F “You feeling better?”
> 
> hope you enjoy!

Sakura stared down at the spider and decided that whatever higher power existed had a personal vendetta against her happiness. She was standing on her desk in her room, watching as the spider sat in the middle of her floor. It was seemingly unperturbed by the blood curdling howl she had let out before ascending to her current perch.

Like many people in medical school, Sakura had issues with control. She could not control which way a large bug might scuttle, or where they might be lurking in her room, and those facts alone made them _terrifying._

She cleared her throat, her eyes still fixed on the spider. Her door was still cracked open. Sometimes Pakkun would trot in for some pets if Kakashi was busy with something, and she liked having the appearance of the small dog to look forward to at regular intervals. Kakashi had left a couple hours ago—probably for a meeting with an advisor, but Pakkun would surely be able to handle this.

“Pakkun,” she called, hating the way her voice had risen several octaves. She heard the dutiful trot of small feet, and then a small wrinkled face appeared around her door. She knew he was a dog, and that he therefore did not have eyebrows, but she could have sworn the small dog raised its brow at her when he saw where she was standing.

She pointed down to the spider. “Get the bug, Pakkun. Eat the bug.”

Pakkun took a long look at the bug and then turned back to Sakura, his head tilted to the side. Sakura would have thought it was very cute if she hadn’t felt like screaming.

“The bug, Pakkun. You need to eat the bug. Yummy bug.”

Pakkun just blinked, long and slow, and Sakura felt her hysteria rising. It was becoming evident that Pakkun was not the hunter she had hoped he would be. She tried to infuse shaky enthusiasm into her voice.

“The bug is a treat Pakkun! A yummy, yummy treat!”

Pakkun was not buying it.

Sakura gulped and considered her options. She could scream for help, or call the building manager, but then she would have to explain why they were breaking the terms of their lease by keeping a dog in the apartment. That left Ino, who killed bugs mercilessly, but Sakura knew she was in a long seminar and she didn’t want to pull her out of it during the first week of class.

Suddenly her phone rang and Sakura nearly hurled herself off the desk in fright. She looked down at the name— _Kakashi._ Perfect, she could play it cool and ask him what time he would be coming home. She could already imagine the dry and amused look on his face when she asked him to kill a bug, and she felt no desire to make him think he was actually doing her a great service by killing the spider.

She answered the phone, ignoring the way it shook in her hand. “Hello?”

“Hey, Sakura, they’re having a sale at Safeway on—is something wrong?”

She cleared her throat, desperately trying to get rid of the shrillness in her voice. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

There was a long silence on the other end and Sakura held her breath. “Seriously,” he finally said, “Is everything okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be,” she heard herself squeak.

“Because you sound like a chipmunk,” he said flatly.

Sakura felt her eyes narrow, despite her current state of utter fear. “That’s a really rude thing to say to someone who is basically a stranger—”

“Come on, seriously, what’s wrong. I feel like I’m having an argument with Alvin and Theodore.”

Sakura gazed down at the spider. It suddenly twitched and she yelped.

“Sakura, is everything okay? What’s happening—”

“There is… an unwelcome guest,” she finally managed.

Another long silence.

“Are you being held hostage or something?”

“Fine,” she hissed, her eyes still glued to the spider in case it showed any more signs of movement. “There is a spider, okay? And I’m scared of bugs, and Pakkun won’t eat it no matter what I tell him.”

“You want Pakkun to eat the spider?” She hated Kakashi in that moment for the small bit of amusement in his voice.

“Better him than me!”

“I can be there in twenty minutes, and then no one will have to eat the spider. Do you want to split a big container of rice with me? Safeway is having a sale and it is so absurdly big that I won’t be able to finish—”

“Yes, sure,” Sakura said. She gazed down at the spider and felt something twist in her gut. “If I’m still alive to eat it by the time you get here.”

Kakashi snorted. “I promise, you will be fine. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Please hurry,” she said, swallowing her dignity for a painful moment.

There was a long pause and she nearly thought he had forgotten to hang up before he finally said, “You’re really frightened, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” she snapped. “Bugs scare a lot of people. Why is that so hard to believe?”

“I don’t know, I guess it just humanizes you. I was beginning to think nothing scared you.”

Sakura felt strangely touched. They had only been living together for about a week, and Kakashi had seemed to sense he was on thin ice after the whole ‘secret dog’ incident and stayed out of her way. She wasn’t sure what could have made him think she was so tough.

Sakura cleared her throat and shifted on the desk. “Well, I guess that’s a very nice thing for you to say.”

“Hang in there another twenty minutes. And I know you want Pakkun to eat it, but please don’t let him try. If he gets bitten it will be a pain in the ass to have to take him to the vet—”

_“Bitten—”_

“See you soon, Sakura,” Kakashi said cheerfully before hanging up.

* * *

The sound of the front door opening was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard.

“Kakashi,” she called, trying to keep her voice level. “In here.”

She heard the thump of shopping bags being dumped on the floor in the kitchen and then his shuffling gait as he approached her room. He poked his head inside.

“Where are y—” He broke off when his eyes found her, still standing on her desk. She could see the hints of a slow smile breaking across his face. “Hey,” he said nonchalantly.

“Kakashi, now is not the time,” she snapped.

He sighed wearily. “Okay, where is the _unwelcome guest_ , as you called it earlier.” Sakura pointed wordlessly to the spider, which had spent the last nineteen minutes stationary on the floor.

“Hmm, he’s a big one.”

“I know,” Sakura snapped.

Kakashi gazed at it for a moment and then his head retracted back behind the door. Sakura ignored the sudden rush of fear she felt at being left alone again and began to mentally count to ten. On seven, Kakashi returned with one of their drinking glasses and a sheet of paper.

“You’re going to trap it,” she said in disbelief.

“Of course. Surely a future medical professional wouldn’t advocate for the unnecessary destruction of life?”

Sakura glared. “If you don’t catch it soon, I might advocate for the destruction of yours.”

He let out a low whistle as he edged slowly towards the spider. “Wow, big threat from the person standing on the desk.”

“Focus on what you’re doing— _shit_!”

Kakashi darted forward in what felt like the span of a single second, quickly fitting the cup over the spider and slipping the paper under the cup. The spider jolted, scrabbling at the edge of the cup as Sakura watched, frozen in fear.

“See,” Kakashi said brightly, glancing up at her. “All taken care of.” He seemed perturbed by the look on her face and straightened, leaving the spider in the cup on the ground. “Hey, you feeling okay?”

Sakura tried to nod, but her face was feeling numb as she watched the spider move, and the room seemed to blur around her. She felt herself sway on the desk and knew that was a _very bad_ thing to do in an elevated position.

“Hey, Sakura, can you hear me?”

His voice suddenly seemed much closer, but her head felt warm and woozy, and she could hear the dull beat of her pulse in her ears. She vaguely registered a weight settling itself behind her shoulders, and then pressure underneath her knees. She closed her eyes, waiting for the impact of the floor, but instead she felt the slow and steady rhythm of footsteps.

“Everything is fine now, no need to worry.”

She tried to nod, but her whole head felt like it was full of cotton. She felt herself being set down carefully on a padded surface and her eyes flickered open, hazily registering that she was now in the living area and seated on their ratty little couch. She heard the faucet run for a moment, and then there was the small click of a glass being set down on the wooden floor by her feet.

“I’m going to go take care of the guest. Water is here if you want it. Pakkun, too.”

Sakura stared down at the floor, then realized a small and furry face was watching her anxiously in the periphery of her vision. She stretched her hand out and felt the warmth of Pakkun’s head beneath her fingers, and with the touch she felt a little bit of reality return to her. She was sitting in the living room. She could feel the couch beneath her, and the flats of her feet on the floor. She reached down for the water and took a long gulp. She began to start another slow count to ten in her head.

By the time the front door clicked open again, she was almost feeling like herself. Kakashi came into the room, his brow uncharacteristically knit. He gazed at her, his eyes traveling over the glass in her hand and Pakkun in her lap.

“You feeling better?”

Sakura cringed. “Deeply embarrassed, but better. Thank you.”

“I don’t know why you’re embarrassed. If I had known you were that scared of bugs I would have come sooner—you could have called before I did.”

Sakura shrugged and looked away. “Part of my first year in med school was dissecting cadavers, so I guess it’s a little embarrassing that a spider showed up in my room and I almost passed out. My literal job description will be _not freaking out_ , so you can imagine that this was a little disappointing for me.”

Kakashi snorted and her eyes flashed back to him. She was surprised to see he almost looked angry. “Sakura, what on earth does being afraid of bugs have to do with being a doctor? I’m honestly surprised something like this hasn’t happened sooner.”

Sakura glared. “What do you mean sooner?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said sarcastically. “Basically the only thing I ever see you eat is quest bars or soylent meal replacement, and last night I woke up at 5am when a car backfired and I could see the kitchen lights were still on. I haven’t said anything because, really, it isn’t my responsibility, but I’m surprised I haven’t found you collapsed outside the building. You need to take better care of yourself, and that is _really, really concerning_ coming from me. Genma would cough up a lung laughing if he heard me giving out lifestyle advice.”

Sakura just gaped at him. This wasn’t anything Ino hadn’t already said to her, but he was right, and it was a little shocking coming from him based on what she had observed of his living habits. She seriously doubted that the man who slouched around in a bandana eating sugary cereal at 2am was an expert in self-care. She sighed and leaned back into the couch.

“You’re right,” she said to the ceiling. “I’ll try to eat a vegetable every once in a while. Thank you for helping me when I was panicking.”

“Maybe you could walk Pakkun, too. You know, for the fresh air.”

Sakura shot him a look and found him smiling. He was poking fun at her.

“You can walk your own secret, illegal lease dog. He abandoned me in my time of need.” Pakkun stared up at her balefully from where he was sitting in her lap and she scratched his head in apology. She was beginning to think that he understood far too much of human language than he should.

“You have actually exposed a serious gap in his training,” Kakashi said in a serious tone. “How could I have forgotten to teach him the _eat bug_ command that all household pets learn?”

Sakura tried to glare at Kakashi, but she felt a small smile tugging at her lips. “Well, I expect that to be rectified.”

Kakashi moved to the grocery bags he had left on the floor, starting to put things away. “You know, I told you when I moved in that I wanted a roommate who would let me go about my days in peace—”

“And I have,” she protested. “I haven’t tried to snatch your bandana _once_ , I don’t talk to you or leave messes—”

“What about the piles of notes you left on the table all of last week?”

Sakura felt herself flush. “Well, maybe I’ve left some _small_ messes.”

“Before you go lock yourself in your room to do more studying, you’re going to come help me make dinner.”

“You want me to help you cook _your_ dinner?”

“I want you to help me make the dinner that we will _share_ after you nearly fainted and toppled off your desk. I know all you have is protein bars and the rice I just bought, and I’m honestly not very confident that you know how to make rice at this point.”

Sakura stared at his back as she watched him rinse vegetables in the sink. She knew it wasn’t a huge gesture, and that she shouldn’t be so moved, but she still felt a little choked up by the idea of sharing food that hadn’t been peeled out of a wrapper. Maybe it really was time to start making some lifestyle changes. She took a breath and padded over to join him at the cutting board.

“What do I do?”

He glanced at her appraisingly. “Do you feel better enough to handle sharp things?”

She snorted. “Please, you’re looking at someone who spent the last three months shadowing a surgeon.”

He handed her the knife and gestured to the onion. “It’s pretty different than the human body, but it shouldn’t be harder. You just need to turn that into a smaller, chopped version of itself.”

She eyed onion skeptically. “And is there a best way to go about—”

She stopped at the sound of him snickering and glared. “Look, I won’t give you a grade on your onion chopping technique,” he said. “Just make it small enough to fry.”

Sakura sighed and began to peel the skin off the onion with her fingers as he skinned a potato into the sink. She felt her eyes drift to his hands. They were nice hands—deft and efficient as they peeled the skin off each potato with a practiced ease. He had long fingers, and a few callouses. That was interesting—why did an MFA student have calluses?

She began to realize that he had been the one to get her from the desk to the couch. Those same hands had plucked her from where she had been standing and gotten her from point A to point B. She flushed as she realized that she was mourning her inability to remember the experience clearly. They were nice hands, after all.

She tore her gaze away from his hands, berating herself for getting distracted. This was the same person who had shown up with a dog he hadn’t told her about, and she still hadn’t seen his entire face. Her job right now was to chop the onion, and she would complete her job without fantasizing about her weird roommate’s hands of all things.

They worked together in silence and she watched with grudging interest as he dumped all the vegetables into the pan with some oil. He grabbed the packs of corn and peas from the freezer and shook a couple clumps into the sizzling pile.

“What are we making,” she finally asked.

“Soup.”

“Really? Isn’t that supposed to be complicated?”

His bandana twitched with amusement. “Maybe some soups, but my version is dump things in one pan, fry, boil, and eat.”

He added spices and she watched carefully. “How do you know how much to use? You didn’t measure any of that.”

“If you make the same thing often enough, you stop needing to measure things.”

“Do you know how to make other things?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Sakura glared. He was being deliberately unhelpful. “What other things?”

“Cereal.”

“…that’s it?”

“Mhm.”

Sakura felt herself smile, even as she tried to force it down by pressing her lips together. “And how does one learn how to make cereal well?”

“Lots of practice,” he said gravely. “There are a lot of different recipes for it. One has to develop their own personal style.”

Sakura gave up entirely on hiding her grin. “And what is your style, Master Chef.”

He tilted his head to the side in mock thought. “My style? I would call it… The 1am realization that I forgot to eat dinner.”

“Ah,” Sakura said. “A classic.”

“I like to think so.”

She waited until he added the broth and told her to come back in fifteen minutes. She made her way back to the door to her room and then found herself stuck outside it, gazing at the entrance to the last place she had seen a bug. She willed herself to put her hand on the doorknob but couldn’t quite manage to do so.

“Want me to help you check for more bugs?”

She jumped and swore. She looked at him over her shoulder. “I swear, you move like a cat. We should get you a bell.”

He just watched her, unimpressed, until she sighed. “Yes, that would be nice. Thank you, Kakashi.”

He nodded and went back to the kitchen to retrieve a glass and a sheet of paper. They entered her room together and Sakura glanced around it to see if she had left anything incriminating lying out.

It was cleaner than usual—she had even managed to make her bed that morning. There were still piles of notes and textbooks scattered all over the room, along with a couple piles of sweaters she kept sniffing in the morning to see if they were too dirty to stop wearing. She had her usual chaotic wall of sticky notes and pinned images up above her desk. Kakashi strolled over and inspected it with interest, cringing when he spotted what she knew was an image from a pre-surgery report that Tsunade had asked her to study. She hadn’t pegged him as squeamish, but then again, he was the one checking for bugs since she couldn’t do it herself.

She watched as he peered under her desk and then her bed with the same dry and unflappable seriousness that he seemed to do everything with. His eyes stopped on a picture she kept in a frame on her bedside table. She and Naruto had their arms slung around each other, while Sasuke had a begrudging and somewhat forced smile. Naruto’s other arm was around his neck, dragging him back into the frame. It had been taken the day they graduated from college, though none of them had been wearing their robes yet.

“Are these your friends,” Kakashi asked, seeming to be interested despite himself. She remembered then that he was a writer, or at least studying to become one. It made sense that he would be interested in some random bits of her life, much in the same way she found herself wondering about what genetic sequence could have resulted in such pretty silver hair.

She wondered how best to answer that question—was Sasuke her friend with the weird on and off again thing they had going? She decided Kakashi was probably looking for a simpler answer than a regurgitation of her whole relationship history.

“Yeah, that’s Naruto and Sasuke. We went to college together.”

He nodded and surveyed the rest of the room. “I don’t see any bugs. I officially declare this a bug-free zone.”

She smiled. “I appreciate that, Kakashi.”

He seemed a little disgruntled by her sincerity. He probably knew how to conduct himself best when someone was griping or nagging at him. “No problem. Soup should be done by now.”

They both left her room and returned to the stove. He ladled out a generous bowl for her and she accepted it with a grin. Even though it was basically just a pile of vegetables and broth, it was the first time she had eaten something that had been prepared on her own stove in her own apartment in a _long_ time. Both she and Ino had been hopeless chefs and any attempt to cook quickly devolved into accusatory shouting matches.

“Look,” he said. “I usually make this soup every Sunday and if you chip in for ingredients and help chop things, you can help yourself to it during the week.”

Sakura blinked at Kakashi, who seemed to be studiously avoiding looking at her by stirring the soup left in the pot. “I would really like that,” she said quietly.

He nodded. “That’s good. I won’t have to peel you off the sidewalk and call an ambulance after you collapse of malnourishment.”

She snorted. “I’d never collapse from malnourishment. I have too much spite in me for that.”

“Right, I forgot you were exempt from the rules that apply to us mortals.”

She grabbed a spoon from the cutlery drawer carried her soup back to her room. “Thank you for everything, Kakashi. I’ll get out of your hair now and let you get back to _enjoying your days in peace_.”

He seemed surprised, as if he had expected her to eat with him, but he quickly covered it up with a shooing motion as she felt a small wave of guilt wash over her. Had he been expecting her to eat with him? She felt guilty for monopolizing so much of his time that evening, but now she felt even guiltier for snubbing what might have been a gesture of friendship.

“I mean, unless—”

“No, no, I have to take Pakkun on his walk. He had a long day of being told to eat things he wasn’t supposed to by mean med school students.”

She watched Kakashi carefully as he shot her a nonchalant smile with his eyes and slipped Pakkun’s harness off the hook hanging by the front door.

She smiled back tentatively and waved as she let herself back into her room. She sat back down at her desk and dug her spoon into her soup to take a large bite. Her eyes immediately began to water—she wasn’t sure if it was from the heat of the soup, or something else.

Maybe something like relief. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's see a show of hands from anyone who has ever owned a pet that refuses to eat bugs for you :/ My hand is up. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! I am still having lots of fun with this! I wanted this chapter to be a little bit of redemption for Kakashi after his kind of slimey move with sneaking Pakkun into the apartment. Neither of them are perfect people but at least he has his uses ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ The whole "unwelcome bug" trope is such a classic in these Roommate AUs that I wanted to use it up as soon as possible-- stay tuned for embarrassing and drunken behavior in next week's chapter lol :O


	3. Chapter 3

Kakashi sank down into his familiar spot at their regular booth, tucked away in the dim corner of the bar. He checked his phone briefly and when he glanced back up he found several pairs of gleaming eyes fixed on him.

“So,” Obito said, his voice dripping with exaggerated interest. “Genma tells me you’re living with a pretty girl now.”

“Yeah,” Genma piped up, already too loud and predictably much closer to being drunk than the rest of them. “Tell them what I said, Kakashi.”

Rin thumped Genma over the head. “You idiot, you should be asking Obito to tell Kakashi what you said. Are you already—”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Genma mumbled, twirling his toothpick expertly between his teeth. “I just want to hear about what’s going on there."

Kakashi saw his opening for a weak distraction and tried to take it. “If you keep talking so loudly, Genma, none of us will be able to hear. How much could you have possibly had already?”

“Stop trying to change the subject,” Rin said, pinning him with a sharp look. “Who is this girl and where did you find her?”

“I didn’t _find_ her anywhere,” he deadpanned. “I just decided it was time for me to seek shelter elsewhere after I kept walking in on you and Obito having sex on surfaces in the kitchen that we use to prepare food.”

Rin and Obito’s faces both turned bright red as Genma honked with laugher. “The kitchen,” he gasped, wiping at his streaming eyes. “I knew you two had been carrying torches for each other for awhile now, but the _kitchen_?”

“Shut up,” Obito snapped, glowering at Kakashi. “He’s just divulging sensitive information we had discussed keeping _a secret_ to deflect attention from himself.”

“I don’t know,” Kakashi said. “If you wanted me to keep the secrets, you shouldn’t have given me so many to keep—”

“What is she like?” Rin interrupted, her eyes bright and determined. Kakashi sighed. None of them would be letting this go until they tortured at least one conversation out of him.

“She’s a med school student. She spends most of her time studying in her room and I’m not entirely convinced she actually sleeps, ever.”

“And she’s _hot_ ,” Genma slurred loudly, raising his drink as they all ducked away from him.

“Is that true,” Obito wheedled, his eyes on Kakashi. “Genma’s gross need to objectify women aside, do you find her attractive?”

Kakashi had been wondering the same thing over the last week or so. He had seen Sakura hobbling around at 4am last night in an oversized hoodie like some kind of gremlin, but she had given him a searing look with eyes that were very _green_ as she told him off for staying up too late. The laugh she had let out when he said that she was standing on top of _Hypocrite Mountain_ had been a little maniacal, a little strained, and maybe a little too loud, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself from thinking it was nice _._ He was beginning to realize that dealing with Sakura was a matter of dealing with extremes, and he was becoming uncomfortable with the growing appeal.

“No,” he said flatly to Obito’s questioning gaze. “She’s my roommate and that’s it. We barely even see each other. Besides, I’m not interested in anything like that.”

“She’s got a real mean streak too,” Genma said, clearly enjoying himself. “Told me off within ten seconds of meeting me, and I heard her swearing like a sailor at her phone on her way out after giving Kakashi his keys to the place.”

“Ooh,” Rin said, banging her palms on the table with excitement. “That’s good, just his type.”

Kakashi glared. “What makes you think I have a type?”

“Anyone you date is going to need a spine of steel to call you out on your bullshit. Besides, you’re a masochist—”

“Another excellent point,” Genma boomed, cutting Rin off as they collectively winced. “There is no way your kinky little brain isn’t going wild at the thought of sleeping with someone in a medical coat—”

Kakashi’s hand flashed out, snatching up one of the forlorn glasses of water on the table and sloshing it into Genma’s face. Rin squealed and tried to remove herself from the splash area while Genma spluttered.

“That’s enough about my personal life and Sakura’s utter lack of involvement with it for the night,” Kakashi said. He smiled blandly as Genma glared and mopped his face with one of the grimy little bar napkins.

“You deserved that, Genma,” Obito said when he opened his mouth to argue. “But, Kakashi, you know the tradition.”

Kakashi sighed. “Aren’t we getting a little too old for this?”

“If you won’t answer a question, you have to take a shot,” Rin said, her eyes gleaming with a vicious light.

“Fine,” Kakashi said, leaning back and holding up his hands in mock surrender. “But I have plenty of my own questions for you, like what Obito was yelling the last time you were—”

“I’ll come back with shots,” Obito interrupted quickly, sliding off his seat and heading to the bar. Kakashi watched him go and resisted the urge to try and slink out under the table. Genma would just kick him.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

Sakura glared at the kitchen trash can. It was approaching midnight, and she and Kakashi had agreed on a rotating schedule of who would take the trash out each week. Needless to say, it was her week, and she did not want to take out the trash. She knew Kakashi was a pretty laidback person and that he probably wouldn’t even notice the difference between the trash being taken out on Saturday night vs Sunday morning, but it was little things like this that would spiral into her leaving bigger chores undone.

She sighed and gathered up the bag of trash and shuffled out the door in her slippers. The dumpster was in the apartment garage, and it was a quick process to hurl the bag in and then jog back up to her room.

She took the back staircase down to the garage, and then decided to take the front staircase on the way up to see if a package had been left in front of the mailroom. Sometimes her parents sent her cookies at the beginning of the semester, and she secretly hoped that they hadn’t started to think she was too old for the tradition.

She sighed at the sight of their empty mail cubby and began to trudge back up the stairs with a new sense of defeat. It was only the first week into her second year, and she was already beginning to feel the fatigue setting in. She could not afford to be burnt out so early on.

She rounded the corner in the stairwell and then screamed. There was a body slumped in the corner at the halfway point up the stairs. Before she could think it might be dangerous or that she should call someone, her instincts had kicked in and she rushed forward.

“Hey, are you— _Kakashi?”_

He turned a bleary set of eyes on her and blinked slowly. “Hello, Sakura,” he slurred.

Was he _drunk_? She looked him over quickly, half expecting to find a stab wound or evidence of a fight. She didn’t find anything.

“Kakashi, are you hurt?”

“Nope,” he said, resting his head on the side of the wall as if they were having a completely normal conversation. “Was coming up the stairs, stairs got hard, decided to take a break.”

Sakura was torn between punching him and bursting into laughter. Oh, he was _drunk_. Before she could really start to enjoy it, she had to make sure he didn’t have any serious alcohol poisoning.

“Okay, buddy. Have you thrown up at all?”

He made a scandalized noise. “ _No_. I can hold my *hic* alcohol.”

She snorted and glanced around to make sure there weren’t any puddles of puke he had neglected to inform her of, much in the same way he had neglected to inform her that he owned a dog.

“Do you feel cold? Have you been shivering?”

He shook his head. “Nice and warm.”

She rolled her eyes and rested her fingers on the inside of his wrist to see if he had a sluggish pulse. He watched with interest. Drunk Kakashi was surprisingly cooperative given that he usually conducted himself with the lazy self-assurance of a cat that did whatever it wanted.

“What color is Pakkun’s leash, Kakashi?”

His brow knit for a moment, and then his eyes crinkled into a happy smile. “Green. Like your eyes.”

She felt herself flush. “You annoying little charmer,” she muttered under her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said, deciding his pulse was normal. “You having a hard time breathing behind that mask? Take a couple deep breaths for me.”

He obediently took a few deep breaths of air, his bandana fluttering in the area where his mouth would be. She sighed, already knowing what his answer to her next question would be.

“Can you take the bandana off for a second? I need to make sure the skin around your mouth isn’t blue.”

He glared at her. “Of all the excuses I’ve heard, that one was the most stupid. I haven’t eaten _anything_ blue—”

She had to repress a giggle. “No, I need to make sure you’re getting enough oxygen and that’s something that happens when you aren’t. I swear I’m not taking advantage of you. I did find you here on the floor and I would feel guilty for not checking.”

He watched her closely and she was beginning to feel slightly intimidated by the intensity in his eyes. Most of the time Kakashi had a relaxed air about him, but she had started to notice that there were moments when something sharper materialized in his gaze—like when he was reading, or when he seemed to be responding to a stressful message on his phone.

In those moments, an energy seemed to coalesce around him. He became a center of gravity with a powerful pull, but then he would blink and wipe it all away with his usual face of dry disinterest in the next second. Sakura was beginning to think that Kakashi was a much, much more complicated person that she had originally assumed, despite his relatively simple lifestyle.

“Fine,” he said suddenly. “But you can only see one half of my face at a time. No looking at the top half.”

She resisted the urge to smile at his drunken logic and gave him a serious nod. “I promise.”

He grabbed his bandana and lifted it so that it was covering the top part of his face rather than the bottom part.

The first thing she noticed was that he had a _really_ nice jawline. Seriously, she mused to herself, it was sharp enough to cut glass. She forced her gaze to his lips to search for the tell-tale blue tinge of alcohol poisoning. He had nice lips, too—full and soft-looking, his bottom lip just slightly bigger than his top lip. She banished the thought as unprofessional and looked over the skin at the edges of his mouth. It all checked out as healthy and she sighed, resisting the urge to take an extra moment to admire his face before it disappeared back behind the bandana forever.

“All good,” she said. “You can return the bandana to its proper place.”

He did so immediately and watched her with a new wariness. “How did you get me to do that,” he seemed to ask himself.

She just shrugged. “It had to be done. I don’t know how long you’ve been here on the floor.”

He stared off at some point behind her head. “Hm. Neither do I.”

“What color is Pakkun’s leash?”

His eyes returned to her with a new exasperated look in them. “You already asked me that.”

She grinned. “Good. Your short-term memory checks out.” She rolled herself back into a crouch on her heels. “Alright, tiger. You _will not_ need to go to the hospital tonight, but you _will_ need to finish climbing up these stairs.”

He gave the stairs such a scathing and unimpressed look that she had to snicker. “I think I’m fine here,” he said.

“Nope,” she said, looping an arm over his back and pressing herself under his shoulder. She had plenty of practice with this from going to parties with Naruto and Ino during her college days. “Up we go. If you puke on me, I’m bringing you to class next week as a willing dissection subject.”

She hauled herself and Kakashi to their feet and nearly staggered. Kakashi had a wiry and lanky look about him, but she was beginning to suspect he was covered with lean muscle underneath the baggy shirts he wore. She swore softly under her breath and began to make her way to the stairs. Luckily there was only half a flight of stairs left.

She took each step one by one, trying hard not to think about how nice Kakashi smelled. He still had the sharp tang of alcohol on him, but underneath it there was the softer, cleaner scent of his detergent. She also smelled something woody, and she mused that it was like the book-scented candle that Ino had gotten her last Christmas. Maybe she was just projecting since she associated him with— well, books.

“You’re going very slowly,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.

She hissed out an annoyed and exhausted breath. “Well, that’s probably because I’m walking for two right now.”

He considered that for a moment. “Fair enough.”

Sakura rolled her eyes. Some of her friends were happy drunks, some of them were angry or sad drunks. She was beginning to think that Kakashi became more quintessentially himself when drunk. She would have found it endearing if her legs weren’t burning.

She limped down their hallway to their door and fumbled with it until it was unlocked. She stumbled over the doorstep and heard Pakkun trotting out to greet them.

“Hello, Pakkun,” Kakashi said in such a happy voice that she had to smile. “How has your night been?”

Pakkun just watched with what Sakura would have sworn was judgement as she dragged Kakashi’s deadweight over to the couch and finally collapsed onto it with him. She let out a long, exhausted sigh, still leaning against his solid warmth as she recovered from the most strenuous activity she had done in months.

“Hey, Sakura.”

She turned to his voice and was surprised by how close his face was to hers. The tip of his bandana brushed against her chin as he gazed down at her with deep, dark eyes. 

“Yes,” she asked, her voice sounding a little faint.

“Can I have some water?”

She snorted and the spell was broken. “God, you so owe me for this,” she said, hauling herself up from the couch and safely away from the warmth of his shoulder.

She filled him a glass of water at the sink and carried it over. He accepted it with a quiet word of thanks and she softened a bit. He would be _very_ hungover tomorrow. She supposed that would be punishment enough.

She heard the generic ringing of an iPhone in the hallway and went to it, realizing that it was Kakashi’s phone and that it must have fallen from his pocket while she was hauling him in. She kneeled to pick it up. The contact name said _Rin_. An odd feeling flickered to life in her stomach— maybe something a little bit like jealousy— but then she firmly quashed it. She was probably just annoyed that the role of sober caretaker had been forced upon her rather than this other person. It wasn’t like she didn’t have work to be doing right now.

She walked back into the living area, the phone still ringing in her hand. “Kakashi, someone named Rin is calling you.”

He flapped his hand at her drunkenly. “I have had _enough_ of that tonight.”

Sakura raised her eyebrows. What exactly did that mean? The phone stopped ringing and she felt herself deflate with a mixture of relief and disappointment. Then it immediately started to ring again and she eyed it warily.

“I’m going to answer it and let her know you’re alright.”

He just waved his hand dismissively, seeming to succumb to being drunk again without all her questions to keep him lucid.

“Hello,” she said, answering the phone and trying to control the odd feeling of trepidation growing in the pit of her stomach.

“Kakashi, you annoying little bastard, you said you would call us when you—wait hello? Who is this?”

Sakura blinked at the loudness of the woman’s voice and held the phone a little further away from her head. “Uh, it’s Sakura. Kakashi is fine, I just got him back to the apartment.”

There was a long pause and she caught snippets of a hushed argument before the woman spoke again.

“Sakura? The med school student?”

She felt her eyebrows raise. “Uh, yes, the new roommate.”

She heard a manic and male cackle somewhere in the background, immediately followed by a loud and insistent _put it on speaker._

“Hey, Sakura,” she heard a new male voice say. “This is Rin and Obito, Kakashi’s old roommates.”

“Oh,” Sakura said, trying to ignore the feeling of relief washing over her. “That makes sense. Yeah, Kakashi is doing fine.”

“Did you say you got him back to the apartment? What does that mean?”

Sakura turned and looked at Kakashi, who was gazing at the glass of water in his hand as if it were utterly fascinating. She shook her head in silent exasperation.

“I actually found him on the stairs. He wasn’t passed out or anything, but he was just sitting there—”

She was cut off by the explosion of two sets of laughter, each wild and full of glee.

“Oh my god,” Sakura heard the voice that must belong to Rin cackle. “You found him on the _stairs_?”

Sakura felt a small smirk spread over her face. She had a feeling that she would like Rin. “Yeah, I had to haul him up half a flight to get him back here. He’s doing fine now, but he’s still a little dopey.”

“Yeah,” Obito said, still laughing. “That checks out. He took _a_ _lot_ of shots.”

“Really? I didn’t have him pegged as the type to drink a lot.”

“It’s a game we have—if you don’t want to answer a question about your week, you have to take a shot.”

“What kinds of questions were you asking him,” Sakura asked, interested despite herself.

She heard another muffled argument, but now that it was on speaker she could catch clearer snippets of the conversation. She heard _this is just cruel_ and _he will be so mad_ along with other mumblings before Obito spoke again, his voice still a little slurred.

“Sakura, do you think Kakashi likes you?”

Sakura blinked. “I think so? He hasn’t said anything mean to me and we seem to get along.”

Laughter exploded out of the other end of the line again and she distantly heard _god, she’s worse than him_ before Rin spoke.

“Sorry about that, Sakura, Obito can’t hold his liquor and he says dumb things. Kakashi likes living with you a lot, no need to worry. Listen, we should all hang out when we’re sober! Tell Kakashi we want you to come next week.”

“Uh, I’m not really sure I have the time for—”

“Nonsense! I just finished a masters in bio engineering, so I get it, but you need to make time for yourself or you’ll go nuts. I’ll remind Kakashi tomorrow.”

“I really don’t—”

“Thanks for taking care of him! See you later!”

“I—”

Then the other line was silent and Sakura let out a long slow breath. She looked up and found Kakashi watching her.

“Friends of yours?” he slurred.

She snorted. “No, friends of yours, actually.”

“I don’t have friends. Just nosy people who make me drink—”

“Okay, okay,” she said, sensing that he was getting worked up. “We’re going to keep you awake for another couple hours and then you can go to bed. I’m going to bring my textbook out here to sit with you, but do you want me to grab you anything? A book? Your laptop? A bowl to puke into?”

He eyed her from where he was sitting, suddenly shrewd. “You’re nicer when people are sick.”

“Well, yeah, that’s going to be my job eventually.”

He just hummed. “Could you bring me the book on the table?”

She went to the table and picked up the large volume sitting on it. She looked down at the cover and then glared at him. She was no literary scholar, but she had listened to enough of her cultured friends complain about this exact same book to know he was being absurd.

“You’re telling me you are going to sit there and read _Infinite Jest_ while you’re drunk off your ass?”

He shrugged. “I don’t like it anyways. Better drunk than sober.”

Sakura snorted. At least some small amount of awareness seemed to be filtering back into him. She dropped the book in his lap and grabbed the empty water glass from his hands. She took it back to the sink and refilled it, then went to her room for blankets and her textbook. People could say whatever they wanted about her work-life balance, but Sakura knew how to be _comfy_ better than anyone.

She returned to the living room and handed him a fluffy blanket and the water, which he accepted very seriously. “Don’t lie down or fall asleep. You have to sit up and read for another few hours. If you puke on our couch, you’re buying us a new one.”

He saluted and she just rolled her eyes, bundling up in her own blanket cocoon and returning to the kitchen table. This wasn’t a distraction she had planned for, and now she had an extra hour of studying to catch up on. She snuck a glance at Kakashi and found him wrapped up in his own blanket, his brow knit in a face of deep confusion as he tried to read. She suspected that under his bandana he was mouthing the words on the page in confusion.

She smiled. At least this distraction had been endearing.

* * *

Kakashi woke up feeling like he had been beaten over the head with a sledgehammer. He winced, bringing a hand to his head, and his first thought was _I’m too old for this_. He cracked an eye open, already knowing that the world around him would be viciously bright and colorful. He realized he was sprawled on the couch, cloaked in a warm blanket that had an increasingly familiar smell—vanilla, something like jasmine, a tinge of coffee, the weird undertone of sterile antiseptic—

He jolted straight up and then immediately regretted it as his head pulsed. Pieces of the previous night began to filter back to him. Rin and Obito hurling question after question at him— _do you like her hair, does she smell nice, is she funny—_ while he downed shot after shot in furious silence as Genma cackled drunkenly in the background like some hyena from hell.

Next time he would just refuse to play. He should have done that from the beginning.

Then there had been the Uber ride home, while he desperately tried to maintain a nonchalant and sober face as the driver eyed him in the rearview mirror. And then had been the stairs, that awful single flight of stairs to get to their apartment on the second floor, and then—

Oh no.

_Can you take the bandana off for a second? I need to make sure the skin around your mouth isn’t blue._

He resisted the childish urge to pull the blanket back over his head. At least he vaguely remembered what had transpired—he hadn’t quite hit blackout drunk. He sat up fully with a sigh, firmly ignoring the growing pain in his head. He knew he was still in his early twenties, that one night of drinking shouldn’t leave him feeling so disgruntled, but then again, he had always been something of an old soul.

He glanced around the apartment looking for a sign that Sakura was around. Part of him wondered how he would face her, but the other part of him was already composing the bland mask of disinterest he would wear if she confronted him. He would thank her but pretend not to remember any of it. _I want a roommate who will allow me to go about my days in peace_ —what a joke.

He sat up and saw slumped shoulders curved over the kitchen table, swathed in what he was beginning to suspect was her favorite grey blanket. Had she slept at the table? Part of him was incredulous, but another part of him was just resigned. It was probably something she did habitually at her desk in her room.

He stood slowly and his whole body protested. He was too tall to sleep scrunched up on their couch, but then again, at least it hadn’t been the stairwell. He padded over to the kitchen table, wondering if he should wake her at all. She definitely needed the sleep but sleeping in that position must be brutal on her back.

Both her arms were resting on the table, her head slumped to the side. Her hair was rumpled, and a stray piece was clinging to her chin. He gazed down at her, his foggy mind replaying Obito’s question: _Do you find her attractive?_

Kakashi couldn’t deny that Genma had been right—his roommate was, for better or for worse, a very pretty woman. Her eyelashes rested in a tangled fringe under her closed eyes, and she had purple bags under her eyes that almost looked lavender in the early afternoon light filtering in from the kitchen window. The light made her hair, strawberry blonde enough that it was basically pink, glow like burnished wire. Her cheeks had a hollow quality about them—Kakashi suspected it was the gaunt kind of look one acquired when they didn’t get enough rest. He then noted that some drool was dribbling out the side of her mouth and smiled. She would be so _mad_ when she realized she had leaked spit all over one of her precious textbooks.

Sakura was indeed a very pretty, very exhausted-looking woman. Spit and all. He didn’t know what to do with that information.

She stirred and panic shot through him. He did not want to explain himself if she woke up and found him hovering over her, so he did the natural thing and jabbed her in her ribs with his finger.

“Fuck,” she said in a voice that was somehow both sleepy and loud as she jolted from the table, spit flying and textbook tumbling to the ground with a loud thump. She swiveled and pinned him with a vicious and sleepy glare as she swiped the back of her hand over her mouth. He took an involuntary step backwards. “What the hell,” she snapped.

“I tried to wake you up but nothing was working,” he lied easily.

She glared at him and then looked around herself in confusion. “What time is it…”

He checked his watch. “Uh, a little bit after 10.”

Panic flooded her eyes. “I slept _seven whole hours_?”

“Yes, and that is still less than the recommended—”

“Oh my god,” she whispered, gazing down at the textbook that was now on the floor. “I’m so behind.”

He felt guilt stirring in his chest and he cleared his throat. She had spent a good chunk of her evening hauling his drunk ass back into the apartment and fetching him water. “Okay, well, you don’t need to help with the soup tonight. I’m going grocery shopping, too, so you can just give me your list. It’s the least I can do after you dragged me back up here.”

Her eyes flashed back to his, suddenly hopeful. “Really? You would do that?”

“It’s no trouble. I was going to do most of it anyways.”

She watched him carefully for a moment. He kept his face blank and clear of anything that might have been incriminating. Finally, a sly smile spread across her face.

“You know, you’re a pretty fun drunk.”

He sighed wearily. Why did he surround himself with people hellbent on torturing him?

“Really,” he deadpanned, deciding to just get the teasing out of the way now.

“Oh, yeah. Absolutely.”

He turned away to start making coffee. “Tell me more.”

“ _I can hold my alcohol_ , says the man sitting on the stairs.”

“Uh huh.”

“ _I haven’t eaten anything blue_.”

“I do remember that one, yes.”

“Ooh, ooh,” she said, and he heard the rustling of paper. “You also decided to read _Infinite Jest,_ and a couple hours into it you asked me for some paper to take notes on.”

Kakashi turned. “I don’t remember that,” he said cautiously.

Sakura just grinned and held up a piece of paper. “You brought your _notes_ back to the table on a trip for water.”

He frowned and stepped closer to read the single messy sentence of his drunken handwriting that had been scrawled in the middle of the page.

“This book is bad,” he read out loud.

“Don’t forget the exclamation point! It really sets the tone for your criticism.”

Kakashi gazed at the sentence and then glanced back at the book on the couch that he had no recollection of reading. “I stand by what I said.”

She grinned, jumping up from the table with a speed that should have been impossible given that she had spent the night sleeping in one of the world’s most uncomfortable sleeping positions. He decided that he must have been right, and that sleeping in folded-over-desk position was something habitual for Sakura.

“Can I have some of your coffee,” she chirped, jogging to her room and nearly skidding across the wooden floor in her mismatched socks. “Wow, I feel so well-rested. Is this how normal people feel?”

“Glad you’re feeling ready to conquer the world on seven hours of sleep,” he called after her. “I’ll keep this in mind and make sure you never get a full nine.”

He heard the obnoxious ping of his cellphone on the kitchen table and shuffled over to it. He found several notifications waiting for him and winced.

_Missed Call (1:34am):_ Rin.

 _Rin (1:42am):_ WE LIKE HER!!!!!

 _Rin (1:44am):_ BRING HER NEXT WEEK!

 _Obito (1:49am):_ hgfhjfg shes nice

 _Genma (2:27am):_ i think I left my phone in the uber

 _Genma (2:32am):_ what do i do

 _Genma (2:52am):_ nevermind lol 

_Gai (5:45am):_ Just wanted to let you know, dear rival, that I am preparing for our race next month with a seven-mile run this morning. What are you doing to prepare, my clever foe?

 _Gai (5:46am):_ Seriously though. Tell me what you have been doing to prepare.

 _Obito (10:33am):_ Bring her next week! Or we will. Genma knows where you live.

Kakashi let out a quiet stream of profanity. Hellbent on torturing him—every last one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kakashi is an absolute pest and i love that for him! this was really just me channeling my more annoying drunk traits-- i will literally sit on any set of stairs, regardless of the time or setting, if i am even mildly drunk. it is deeply and horrifically embarrassing. once i sat on a moving escalator bc somehow in my mind i still classified it as "stairs." do i hate myself? yes, absolutely. 
> 
> there was less banter in this one but lots more to come in the next chapter! thanks for reading! if anyone is interested, the two songs that have sent me down this wild writing spiral are I Wear Glasses by Mating Ritual and New Religion by Heydaze.


	4. Chapter 4

When Sakura finally hauled herself home on Friday, she felt like she had died at some point during the week and then had been microwaved back to life. She gazed up the single flight of stairs and empathized with last week’s drunken Kakashi— _stairs got hard_ indeed.

She knew it was a blessing that she had caught the eye of _The Tsunade_ , who had taken her on as an apprentice of sorts. She felt the weight of jealous eyes on her whenever she entered her lab, or whenever she raised her hand during class. It seemed like the constant question of _why her_ echoed around wherever she went. She almost expected to find it written on a piece of paper and taped to her back.

She was determined to work hard enough that no one would ever ask _why her_. Yet doing both medical school and research, on top of remaining a semi-sane human being, was wearing her down. She almost envied the other students.

She finally made it to their door and glanced down at her watch. 7pm—not too shabby all things considered. Maybe tonight she could make an exception to her study schedule and just _sleep_ like she so desperately wanted to. 

“I’m back,” she called, kicking her shoes off at the door and dumping her backpack of textbooks down. She knew Kakashi wouldn’t mind.

She heard him grunt in acknowledgement and rounded the corner to find him sitting in their living area, nose buried in a book. His eyes flicked up upon her entrance and he glanced over her critically.

“You look tired.”

Sakura snorted. “What a gentleman. Exactly what every lady wants to hear.”

“How much sleep did you get last night?”

“Tons,” she drawled, making her way over to the fridge for a beer.

“Really? Because when I finally went to bed at 3am I thought I could hear—”

“You heard the ghost. I’m telling you this place is haunted. You should write a book about it.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. She had started a running joke about his writing last week. Being an MFA student meant that he had to produce writing of some kind, and would he let her read it? No, had been his answer. Full stop. No explanation, regardless of how obnoxious she made herself, or how many times she brought it up. She peeled a protein bar out of its cardboard box and grimaced. Dinner of champions.

“Do you already write ghost stories,” she continued innocently. “Or maybe romance novels?”

“I write horror stories about nosy med school students keeling over and dying because they subsist on beer and protein bars.”

Sakura scowled and washed down her first dry bite of the protein bar with a mouthful of beer. He winced and she rolled her eyes. Sure, it was gross, but so was she.

“I’m allowed to be as disgusting as I want in the comfort of my own home. It is Friday night, after all. Any big plans other than sulking and passing judgment from the couch?”

“Yeah, I might go sulk and pass judgment from the grocery store.”

Sakura sighed. “God, we’re wasting our youth.”

“Speak for yourself. I think my youth is being perfectly well spent here.”

“Are your friends still pestering you about dragging me out with you all tomorrow night?”

His eyes returned to her, suddenly guarded. “No, I told them you were too busy for that. I all but made them swear with blood oaths that they wouldn’t show up here tomorrow night.”

Sakura nodded, ignoring the strange mixture of relief and disappointment rising in her chest. Had she wanted to meet Kakashi’s friends? Yes and no—she was curious about him, and his friends might have been able to shed some more light on the air of mystery he casually maintained, but it also would have meant giving up a whole evening of her time. If she was going to give up an evening of studying, it really should be with her own friends. Was it a little hurtful he hadn’t tried to encourage her to come? Maybe. Was she too tired from her day to care? Probably.

“Blood oaths, huh? So you write thrillers? Dark fantasy?”

His bandana shifted with what she knew was a small smile. “Something like that,” he said.

Sakura decided she wasn’t quite done being obnoxious yet and sidled over to the couch, falling onto it next to him with a large, dramatic sigh. He cast her a skeptical look out of the corner of his eyes as she took another large bite of her protein bar. 

“So whatcha reading?”

“Annoying roommate extermination manual.”

“Oh great, I’ve been meaning to get my hands on one of those.”

She leaned over and he stiffened as she grew close enough to read the words off the page. She raised her eyebrows and then snatched the book out of his hands as he yelped. She stared down at the giant red caution sign on the cover and realized what she was holding.

“Oh my god! Are you just sitting here reading porn? On the communal couch?”

Sakura was somewhat pleased to see from behind her outrage that he had a slight flush in his cheeks.

“It is isn’t porn, it is _literature_ ,” he hissed, making a grab for the book as she lunged backwards on the couch to stay out of his reach.

“Oh really,” Sakura cried, shoving him backwards with her foot. “Because I found my mom’s stash of these when I was in high school and I was never quite the same. God, these are 90% cheesiness and 10% raunchy sex. You’re either a complete softy or absurdly horny—”

Then he pounced, slapping the protein bar out of her hand and lunging forward to try and grab the book out of her other hand. She toppled backwards with a squeal and ended up pinned underneath him on the couch, each of his hands clasped over her wrists, his bandana hanging down to brush her cheeks as he glared at her. She took in a shuddering breath as she gazed up into his irritated face.

“As the one getting a graduate degree in _books_ , I think I’m better qualified to pass judgement on which ones have substance and which ones don’t.”

Sakura grinned. “So _Icha Icha_ ranks above _Infinite Jest_ on the scale of literary excellence?”

She watched a hint of unwilling amusement gleam in his eyes before he scowled. “Yes,” he said.

She rolled her eyes, and then realized that he was still on top of her, his warm hands over her wrists, pieces of his silver hair drifting down and brushing against her forehead. He was propped up on his legs so he wasn’t lying directly on top of her, but a couple inches and he could be—

Then he had rolled back suddenly, returning to his end of the couch with his book. He held it resolutely up in front of his face with a new white-knuckled grip. She doubted she would ever be able to snatch a book away from him again. She blinked, trying to regain her sense of reality as she sat up. The first issue was her nearly finished protein bar, which had been knocked unceremoniously to the floor and rendered inedible.

“Hey,” she snapped. “You better reimburse me for that quest bar. Those things are almost two bucks.”

“You’ll have to kill me for it,” was his sharp response from behind the book.

Sakura stared at his tense posture for a moment longer, his face still obscured behind the cover of his book. Maybe now he would start wandering around the apartment in a ski mask, or a tactical suit with night vision goggles. The idea didn’t seem so far-fetched.

Part of her brain desperately wanted to relive the thrilling experience of being pinned underneath him and dissect its potential implications for the next several hours, but Sakura had learned from years of hauling ass and running in circles around Sasuke that such dissection of random moments rarely led to anything fruitful. Besides, she was still tired from her day. She had tried to take his book like some obnoxious middle schooler, and he had sunk to her level and fought back. That was it, end of story.

She stood up from the couch and stretched before hobbling back over to the counter where she had left her beer.

“If you do go to the grocery store, could you pick up some chips? I’ll pay you back—I’m just craving something crunchy.”

He grunted ambiguously, but she had been around him enough the last few weeks to recognize that was his grudging version of _yes, fine_.

He lowered the book for half a second to glance at her and then immediately moved it back in front of his face. “If you want something crunchy—I don’t know, I’m just brainstorming here— maybe leaves or green vegetables would do the trick?”

Sakura smiled. So he wasn’t mad after all. “No, it needs to be spicy or covered in cheese powder.”

“You know, people actually cook vegetables in that exact—”

He was cut off as both of their phones lit up and began to ring with the same generic ringtone. He set his book down and regarded his phone warily as she pulled her own out of her pocket.

“I recognize this number,” she said. “It’s the number for when someone buzzes our apartment from the front door to the building.”

His face paled above his bandana. “They wouldn’t.”

Sakura unlocked her phone and put it on speaker. “Hello,” she asked cautiously.

“Heeeeyyyyy, Sakuraaaaa,” Ino’s familiar voice screamed through the static. Sakura watched as Kakashi slouched with visible relief. “I know we just got lunch yesterday but I still haven’t seen the new place and I miss your ugly face!” She giggled a little tipsily. “Wow, that rhymed.”

“Sakura,” Naruto’s voice bellowed into the intercom, somehow louder than Ino’s. “I was waiting really patiently for the invite to a housewarming party but it never came so—oh hey, what’s up?”

“These are my friends,” Sakura whispered to Kakashi, gazing at her phone with a grudging smile. He nodded, watching with amusement.

“Hey,” Sakura heard another less familiar voice say. Kakashi stiffened on the couch. “We’re just here waiting to be buzzed in. Finish your call first.”

Sakura looked at Kakashi to ask if that had been Genma’s voice, but the new paleness of his face told her that it definitely was.

“And those are my friends,” he said in disbelief as Naruto chattered away with new voices that she recognized as Obito and Rin’s. Naruto always made friends with an infuriating ease. Kakashi jumped up from his seat on the couch and snatched the phone from her.

“I told you not to come and you _swore—”_

“We swore we wouldn’t come on Saturday night,” Obito said cheerfully. “And we won’t! Happy Friday!”

Kakashi’s eyes blazed. “Do I need to start drawing up comprehensive contracts to get you all to leave me alone?”

“Wait,” Rin said in the background. “How is Kakashi already on the intercom? Are you guys here for Sakura?”

Sakura heard Ino’s muffled affirmation and the whole small group of stragglers let out cheers of amusement and glee as her eyes connected with Kakashi’s over the phone. He was looking less than thrilled at the idea of a pack of people waiting outside their apartment for them.

“What do we do,” she whispered.

His eyes flickered around the room for ideas. “How quickly do you think we could barricade the door?”

Sakura laughed, but when he didn’t she realized he was completely serious. She pondered the idea. Maybe a barricade would be good.

“Look, Forehead, it’s cold as balls out here and if you don’t let me in right now I’m going to start sharing your secrets with our new friends—”

Sakura didn’t even think twice as she hit the pound button on the phone to unlock the door as Kakashi gave her a look of utter betrayal. They heard the muffled cheers of their friends as the door clunked open and the intercom clicked off.

“She knows too much,” Sakura snapped at him. “And we’re outnumbered. How long would we really have been able to hold out?”

“I don’t know, a _week_ ,” he snapped. “All you eat is nonperishable food and I know you have a stash somewhere.”

Sakura flushed. He wasn’t wrong. “Well it’s too late now! Make yourself presentable. Get your porn off the couch.”

He shot her an angry look, but nevertheless went over to the couch to retrieve his book and take it back to his room.

“And don’t lock yourself in there,” she called after him. “If I’m suffering through this, you are too.”

Pakkun trotted out of Kakashi’s room to see what all the commotion was about and she grinned down at him. At least she wouldn’t have to sit through the party completely alone if Kakashi decided to climb out a window. She reached down and scratched his head just as pounding started on their front door.

“Let us innnnn,” Naruto bellowed. “We come bearing gifts!”

Sakura heard Kakashi swearing as he made his way over to the door. He took in a long and slow breath, and then opened it to the chaos.

Naruto and Ino swarmed over the doorstep before he could even get out a word of greeting while Obito, Rin, and Genma followed at a more cautious pace. They almost seemed to be expecting a booby trap of some kind. Sakura considered the likelihood of Kakashi booby trapping the entrance of his apartment to keep others out. It checked out. If given more time, he probably would have.

“Sakuraaaa,” Naruto yelled, dumping a very large and bulky package on the table before he swept her up into his arms for a spin. She giggled and then smacked his arm to get him to put her down. He stepped back and peered at her suspiciously. “You feel kinda light—have you been drinking soylent instead of eating actual food again?”

“Yes,” Kakashi said before she could respond. She shot him a glare for ratting her out. He was leaning against the wall and observing with an inscrutable expression. He seemed to be very intent on ignoring Genma, who kept insistently punching his arm in an effort to get his attention.

“You know that isn’t good for you, Forehead,” Ino snapped. She snatched Sakura up in her own version of a gruff hug before thumping her over the head. “You move out for one month and you’re already slipping back into bad habits—”

“Hey, hey, is it pick on Sakura night or what,” she grumbled, rubbing her head and shooting Ino a vicious glare. “You should be grateful I even let you in here.”

“You’re right, she’s perfect,” she heard Obito crow off to the side.

Sakura swiveled to face the newcomers and Obito gave her an unrepentant grin while Rin smiled a little more sheepishly. Obito had a shock of rumpled and unruly brown hair and dark eyes that flashed with amusement. Rin had a neatly trimmed bob, and she wore the subtle kind of makeup that Sakura had always wished she knew how to apply. Her eyes were sweet, and Sakura could already tell she was a kind soul.

“Hi, Sakura,” Rin said, stepping forward and extending a hand. “It is really nice to meet you. Ignore Obito—he was always fixated on irritating Kakashi while we lived together. He says a lot of nonsense.”

Obito just grinned. “You’re like a pinker, louder, angrier version of Kakashi,” he said.

Sakura and Kakashi both made outraged and insulted sounds and Obito’s grin turned into a smirk, his point proven. “Forget I said anything,” he said as Rin pinched his arm.

“And who are you,” Genma said in a low and sultry voice, his eyes fixed on Ino. Sakura resisted the urge to roll her eyes. From here on out, it would be battle of the flirts. Ino loved her games, and Genma was a handsome and willing participant hurling himself into her clutches.

Ino extended an elegant hand, batting her lashes. “I’m Ino, Sakura’s old roommate. And you are?”

“Intolerable,” Kakashi snarked from where he was sulking.

Genma just ignored him and swept into an outrageous bow, pressing Ino’s knuckles gently to his lips. Naruo roared with laughter in the background and Sakura couldn’t help but agree. At least they would have some entertainment for the night.

Sakura subtly disentangled herself from the main unit of people. They were all still introducing themselves to one another, and Genma was slapping bottles of alcohol and mixer onto the table. It seemed like he was planning on throwing a party. Sakura sighed and wound back towards the fridge, where she knew another already-cold beer lived. It was time to settle herself in for the long haul.

She sensed Kakashi hovering behind her before he spoke. “What’s our plan,” he muttered, eyeing their mingling friends over his shoulder. “What’s the quickest way we can get them out?”

Sakura turned to face him, a small smile curling on her face. “Plan?”

“Yes,” he snapped. “Can you suddenly have some big test you need to study for next week?”

“Well, sadly enough for me, that’s real—”

“Or I can say Pakkun doesn’t like strangers?”

Sakura looked over at Pakkun, who was panting happily as Naruto gave him a belly rub and Ino dangled a toy over his head. “Yeah, I don’t think they’re gonna buy that one.”

“Are you allergic to anything? Will a small amount of it kill you?”

Sakura snorted. She could feel some fondness seeping into her grin and her eyes, and she decided that she would worry about it later.

“Look, Kakashi, I don’t know about your friends, but mine are _really_ stubborn. Once they get in, it’s basically impossible to get them out, and I just heard Naruto take a shot. We’ll take this one as a loss, but next week we’ll invest in a better security system. The best we can do is try to enjoy ourselves until it’s over.”

Kakashi gazed down at her for a moment, his dark eyes thoughtful. “You should eat something,” he said suddenly, gesturing to the unopened bottle of beer in her hand. “Before you drink that. I know you haven’t eaten real dinner yet and three quarters of a quest bar doesn’t count.”

Something warm unfurled in her chest at his concern for her wellbeing. How stupid, she told herself. It wasn’t as if Ino and Naruto hadn’t been saying the exact same thing to her like thirty seconds ago. This was in no way shape or form as _special_ as it felt. He had also just tried to convince her to ingest something that would have been poisonous to her body as an excuse to get people out of the apartment.

“I don’t have anything to make for real dinner—”

“Just eat a piece of toast or something. I have bread in my cupboard.”

Before she could open her mouth to protest, he had snatched the beer from her and twisted the top off for himself. He sauntered away, her beer in his hands, and somehow she wasn’t as mad about it as she thought she would be.

She smothered her small grin and grabbed the loaf of bread from his cupboard, fishing out a couple pieces and popping them in the toaster.

“You two seem to get along.”

Sakura turned to find Rin leaning against the counter and smiling warmly at her. Sakura mustered up her own smile in response. It was time to be social now, and there was nothing she could do to change that.

“We coexist. I don’t really know him that well.”

“He’s a pretty reserved person,” Rin said diplomatically.

“Has he always worn that bandana?”

“Ever since he was a kid. For a while he was into surgical masks. Sometimes on fancier occasions he’ll break out a cloth mask.”

Sakura grinned as she slathered her toast with butter. “Any funky patterns over the years?”

Rin chuckled. “Not that I can recall. You’ll have to keep us updated if that changes.”

“So why did he move out?” Sakura turned and leaned against the counter with Rin, two warm pieces of toast in her hand. “You and Obito seem fun. You were childhood friends?”

Rin nodded slowly and held up her hand in response. A very tasteful and thin golden band was on her left index finger. Sakura cooed and Rin shook her head bashfully. “Obito and I started dating a few years ago during college and Kakashi was really great about it. Never complained once about being a third wheel, but we just got engaged and we’ve been a little… much. Even for him.”

Sakura smiled wickedly and wiggled her eyebrows. “I’m sure you have.”

Rin gazed at her for a moment, her sharp brown eyes tracking over Sakura’s face in a scrutinizing way before she broke into a smile. “You’re great,” Rin said suddenly.

Sakura blinked. “Um, thank you? Did Kakashi tell you otherwise--”

“No, no, definitely not,” Rin said. “It’s just, when Kakashi moved out we were both worried. He’s always been fine on his own—a little _too_ fine on his own. We thought he was going to move in with some other antisocial person and then just lock himself in his room to read all day.”

Sakura cracked a smile. “I hate to break it to you, but that’s basically what he’s done.”

Rin shook her head. “He’s always going to be the solitary type, but I can tell he likes you.”

“Really? How?”

Sakura tried to ignore the fluttering feeling in her chest. It all meant nothing—obviously they weren’t twelve and _he likes you_ didn’t mean anything on a romantic level. With Kakashi it was probably synonymous with _he tolerates you._ She was just overworked and looking for a fun outlet to obsess over. She’d learned her lesson with all the time she spent analyzing the things Sasuke did during her undergrad years. It was just a means of distracting herself from the less pleasant aspects of her life, and all the fantasies typically ended in disappointment.

Rin shrugged. “Kakashi has never been reserved about making it obvious when something annoys him. Last week, even when he was drunk, he only had nice things to say about you.”

“Nice?”

“Well, nothing effusive, but it seems like he’s having fun here.”

Sakura smiled, her eyes traveling to where Kakashi was standing with Naruto and Genma. He was leaning against the wall, lazily swirling the bottle of beer that had once been hers. He caught her gaze and gave her a beseeching look— _come get me away from your crazy friend or I’ll stop doing apartment chores—_ and she chuckled. She finished the last warm bite of her toast and dusted off her fingers.

“We should go rescue him before Naruto talks his ear off.”

She grabbed herself a fresh beer from the fridge to replace the one that had been stolen and made her way over to their group with Rin.

“Sakuraaa,” Naruto called when she drew up beside him. He pulled her in for a one-armed hug and rubbed his knuckles over her hair as she squawked with protest. “You finally came over here! I was beginning to think you were mad at me or something.”

Sakura scowled and ran her fingers through her hair in an attempt to fix it. “Why would I be mad at you?” She considered the question for a moment and her voice grew more threatening. “Is there a reason I should be mad at you?”

Naruto shrugged sheepishly. “I don’t know, maybe because I didn’t bring the bastard with me. I tried my hardest but he has some big test this week.”

“That’s okay, Naruto, really—”

“Are we talking about _you-know-who_ again,” Ino snapped, looking up from the ground where she was sitting with Pakkun. “Because I _know_ we aren’t talking about him when we’re supposed to be having a fun evening. I don’t even want to hear about whatever new state of train wreck you two are in right now.”

Sakura felt herself flush. “I know, Ino-pig, and I’m trying to change the—”

“Who is you-know-who,” Obito piped up. “An ex of yours? Lord Voldemort?”

Sakura felt her face grow impossibly warm with embarrassment. Rin and Obito were eyeing her with poorly concealed interest, and even Kakashi had perked up.

“I’ll summarize,” Ino said. “Sakura and Voldemort have been in a vicious cycle of breaking up and getting back together for years. Sakura, who called it off last time?”

She felt her eye twitch. “I did. But—”

“And who called it off the time before?”

“He did. But seriously, Ino—”

“And the time before that?”

“Okay, I did, but this is—”

Ino gestured as if to say _need I go on?_ “We’re on like chapter five hundred of this miserable saga,” she complained. “And all of us are just waiting for it to _end_.”

“I don’t know,” Naruto said, butting in. “I’m kind of rooting for them.”

Sakura was sure she resembled a tomato at this point. A tomato with pink hair, which was never a good look.

“It really has ended this time,” she snapped, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. “Not that it is any of your business.”

“Wow,” Kakashi finally said. Her eyes leapt from the floor to his face. She gazed at him intently, not quite certain what she expected (or wanted) to see, but his expression was as carefully neutral as ever. “That sounds exhausting,” he said, leaning back against the wall and taking a sip of his beer underneath his bandana.

“It was.”

There was a long, tense moment. Ino seemed to sense she had overstepped and went back to giving Pakkun a belly rub.

“I brought a present,” Naruto suddenly blurted. All eyes turned to him as he rushed to the table and waved at the giant box he had set on it earlier. “Well, it isn’t really a present so much as something I’m regifting, but I thought it might be nice for the new place!”

Sakura smiled and went over to the mystery box. She wondered if it was giant container of ramen, but then reminded herself that Naruto would sooner give away his kidney. “Thank you, Naruto, that’s very sweet of you.”

She opened the lid of the box as everyone gathered around curiously. Inside was a large and clunky monitor that was clearly used.

“Wow,” Sakura said, taking care to infuse lots of enthusiasm into her voice as Naruto practically glowed with self-satisfaction. “This is so cool! A monitor!”

“Not just a monitor, silly!” Naruto plucked the heavy piece of technology out of the box with an absurd ease that Sakura couldn’t help but envy. “You can use it as a TV in your living area! It’s pretty big—like thirty inches—and you can chrome cast your Netflix and stuff onto it!”

“Yes,” Sakura agreed with diplomatic enthusiasm as she felt Kakashi begin to hover at her shoulder. She shot him a discreet but vicious look as if to say _upset Naruto by rejecting the gift and you’ll see how well I can disembowel another human being._

Naruto began to plug it in, still chattering away happily. “Shino gave it to Hinata, but she didn’t want it! He had it for some weird bug watching thing, but now that he’s going on his research trip to South America he doesn’t need it anymore. I was going to keep it, but I know you don’t have anything to watch TV on and I thought it would be perfect!”

Sakura felt herself melt. Naruto was such a sweet, clueless boy. And she loved him dearly for it. She also couldn’t help but admire Hinata’s subtle shrewdness in getting the giant bug monitor out of the apartment she shared with Naruto. Clever girl.

She felt Kakashi elbow her in the ribs and she kicked his foot, an exchange that clearly hadn’t gone unnoticed by others because she heard Genma and Obito start snickering somewhere behind them. It was abundantly clear that Kakashi did not, in fact, want a giant pseudo-TV on their kitchen table, but that was not something that needed to be discussed tonight.

Naruto beamed at the newly set up monitor and swiveled to face Sakura. She gave him a beatific grin. “Thank you, Naruto. This was very sweet of you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ino muttered, shoving her way to the table. “The new fake TV is nice and all, but I’ve only had two shots and I’m planning on getting comfortably drunk before midnight.”

With that the small party resumed, Genma trailing Ino back to the table as if he had already been sucked into her orbit. Sakura almost pitied the poor man. All the men who considered themselves ‘players’ never managed to hold up against the relentless force that was Ino. Sakura watched them take shots together, gleaming eyes fixed on one another. The silly man was in danger and he didn’t even realize it.

She stepped back to lean against a wall, content to watch as Naruto and Obito discussed something with great animation. Obito had his arm casually looped around Rin’s waist, his thumb rubbing small circles into her back. Once upon a time a scene like that would have sent her spiraling into a crisis over the sorry state of her ownlove life, but a nice benefit of med school was that it made her too tired to care. The internal meltdown just wasn’t worth the payoff.

She sensed Kakashi coming over and leaning against the wall beside her. He gazed straight ahead at the newly set up monitor, something slightly pained in his face. Sakura watched the monitor with him, thinking that it had somehow given their apartment a chaotic energy that reminded her of a frat house.

“This is embarrassing,” he finally said.

She shot him a side glare. “Oh, I’m sorry, have any of your friends brought expensive gifts we can watch TV on?”

“No. And thank God.”

Sakura couldn’t keep a straight face, but it was probably just the fact that she was finishing off her second beer. She elbowed him in the ribs. “You know what, I agree. I came in here today to find you reading porn. God only knows what I’d stumble upon now that there’s a screen.”

She was thrilled to see the small tint in his cheeks. “It is _literature_ ,” he hissed at her. “I never thought you would be so obnoxiously puritanical. You probably support banned books lists.”

Sakura opened her mouth to reply but was cut off by Ino’s loud and silky laugh. Sakura turned to check on her progress with wrapping Genma around her finger. She found Ino laughing at something he had said, her hand lightly touching his arm in a way that had him grinning like an idiot.

“Oh, he is down for the count,” Sakura said, gesturing towards the couple with her beer. “Hook line and sinker.”

Kakashi watched with mild interest. “I don’t know, Genma has some tricks up his sleeve.”

They watched as Genma reached out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind Ino’s ear, his fingers trailing for a second too long along her jawline. Sakura let out a low, soft whistle, impressed despite herself.

“Good one,” she admitted. “If a guy did that to me I’d melt into a puddle. My money is still on Ino, though.”

Kakashi chuckled. “That’s really all it would take? Tucking some hair behind your ear to melt you into a puddle?”

“When you spend most of your time surrounded by dead bodies, a basic and warm human touch will get you a long way.”

“I think you should have higher standards.”

Sakura turned to him, ignoring the warm feeling coming back to life in her chest. “Oh really? And why is that?”

His eyes danced with amusement. “I don’t know. You might be a goblin of the night, but you have redeeming qualities.”

“Such as?”

He shrugged. “You never leave messes in the kitchen, because, you know, you never use it.”

She glared and smacked his arm. “Anything else?”

He smothered a smile and went back to gazing thoughtfully at the pseudo-TV. “You’re a good person. A kind person. Even if you’re a little… on edge.”

Sakura felt strangely touched. She wasn’t quite able to hide the large grin blooming on her face. She took a sip of her beer and smiled against the cool glass.

“Well, I think you’re a good person, too. A little sneaky, though. Maybe a little reclusive.” He shrugged ambivalently and she just rolled her eyes. “I also think you have a lot going on in your head that you don’t share. Sometimes I wish you would.”

She felt the heavy weight of his gaze as he turned to face her, and she forced her eyes to his. This was one of the moments when she saw the shift in his eyes—the blank and casual disinterest falling away to reveal something sharper, something keener. She just stared, caught up in the gravity of the sudden change.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said quietly.

They were interrupted by loud cheering and Sakura jumped. She turned to where Naruto seemed to be hooking something up to the monitor while Obito and Genma crowded around him making noise. Rin came over to Sakura and Kakashi, a chagrined look on her face.

“Apparently Naruto had his switch in his backpack. They’re setting up Mario Kart.”

Kakashi raised his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

He looked down in surprise as Sakura thrust her nearly finished beer against his chest. “Hold this,” she said, feeling a competitive fire flicker to life in her stomach. “I need to defend my title.”

As she walked away, she heard Rin say something unintelligible to Kakashi and she caught the last bit of what sounded like a very emphatic _No_ from him. Part of her was curious and wanted to turn back and rejoin the conversation, but she was already flushed with emotion that she didn’t quite know how to handle. She had always envied Ino for her ability to neatly compartmentalize her feelings. Sakura lacked basically all of those skills and had to make do with exhausting herself past the point of caring.

She snatched a joycon out of Genma’s hand and he yelped. “Go find Ino, lover boy,” she snapped as she settled herself in a chair next to Obito.

“Not fair,” Obito protested. “You haven’t been drinking nearly as much as I have.”

Sakura gestured for Naruto to bring her over a couple shots. He gave her a familiar foxlike grin as he obediently poured them out and handed them over one by one. Naruto was accustomed to her obnoxiously high tolerance level. Obito’s eyes bugged out after the fourth consecutive shot and Sakura decided in a fuzzy haze that it meant she could probably stop. Genma whooped in the background, and Sakura refused to even wonder what Kakashi was thinking, but that was growing harder with the new fog in her brain.

“How the hell—”

“I have a working theory that she doesn’t actually have any taste buds,” Kakashi said from somewhere towards the back of the room.

“Almost right,” Sakura said, feeling the familiar urge to trash talk. “I just don’t have any fucks to give.”

Naruto and Genma hooted loud _OOOOOOOHH’s_ while Obito narrowed his eyes. “Oh really,” he said. “How about loser takes a shot after each round?”

Sakura grinned, thinking that Obito had never experienced post-shift drinks in Tsunade’s office at the end of a long day. He was in for a rough time if he thought he was going to hold out longer than she was.

“Deal.”

* * *

Rin glared at Kakashi. “Did you have to get her flustered enough to take it out on my fiancé? If he pukes on the ride home, I’m absolutely blaming you and sending you the cleaning bill.”

Kakashi glanced over at Obito and Sakura. Obito was no longer able to sit up straight in his chair, but he was somehow still moving the controls on his joycon. Kakashi couldn’t help but think it was entirely his own fault for his obnoxious penchant for drinking games. Sakura had taken her fair number of shots, but they just seemed to make her more and more vicious. She had hit Obito with the blue shell right before the finish line nearly three times in a row. Kakashi tried very hard not to be impressed by her ruthlessness.

“I didn’t say anything to her,” he said, ignoring the probing look Rin was giving him. “Besides, I seriously doubt anyone could fluster Sakura intentionally, much less unintentionally.”

“Oh please, I saw you two flirting. Elbowing each other and giggling over here by yourselves.”

Kakashi let out a long, slow breath through his nose, determined not to react. “I do not _flirt,_ nor do I _giggle_.”

“Sure. You can keep telling yourself that, but I’m cutting them off now.”

Kakashi watched as Rin strode forward and proclaimed Sakura the winner. Sakura grinned, not even seeming too upset when Naruto ruffled her hair and thumped her on the back. Rin hauled Obito up from the chair and steered him over to the couch as he gave her a very dopey and sweet look.

Kakashi pressed his lips together tightly behind his bandana, reminding himself that he had no desire to have what his friends had. He had decided a long, long time ago that a serious relationship or partnership was not something he wanted for himself. He wandered back over to where Naruto, Genma, Ino, and Sakura were still sitting in a half ring of chairs in front of the fake TV.

Naruto was loading up a new game and explaining it animatedly. “This one is a good one for calming down.” He shot Sakura a quick look out of the corner of his eyes and she raised a single eyebrow in challenge, as if daring him to make a reference to her. “Which I think all of us, especially me, could use from time to time,” he said in a quick rush. “It’s called Animal Crossing.”

“How do you beat it,” Ino asked, squinting at the small screen from where she was sitting in Genma’s lap.

“You don’t beat it! That’s what’s so great about it.”

Sakura snorted in disgust and Naruto shot her a glare. “It’s about making friends with all the animal villagers! It’s wholesome!”

“What if you’re already friends with animals,” Kakashi asked.

“Aww,” Ino cooed, reaching down to where Pakkun was curled up at their feet to scratch his ears. “Is Pakkun your animal friend?”

“No, I was referring to Genma.”

Genma flipped him off silently while Sakura chuckled. Kakashi firmly ignored the warm feeling in his chest as she stuck her hand out over her shoulder for a high-five.

Naruto was still chattering, completely unaware that people had stopped listening. “And this is where I put my house! And behind it is where I keep my trash heap!”

Kakashi squinted at the screen. “Is that a skeleton?”

“Yeah,” Naruto said sagely. “He died there.”

“Makes sense,” Kakashi said.

“Alright everyone,” Rin said, clapping her hands loudly enough to make all the sleepy drunks mesmerized by the screen cringe. “It is time to go home. We’ve tortured Kakashi and Sakura long enough.”

Sakura raised what must have been her third beer in a feeble toast of agreement and Kakashi scowled.

“I can give everyone a ride home, but you have to get moving now.”

The drunken herd of people shuffled slowly to the door behind Rin as Obito came over to give Kakashi a hug, which he suffered through in silence. Obito was a touchy-feely kind of drunk. Rin shot Kakashi one last knowing smile before she closed the door behind them. He sighed and locked it. A better security system indeed.

He went back to the kitchen where he found Sakura still staring at the now blank monitor as if something was still playing on it. 

“What are you watching?”

“Something…Very boring…”

He couldn't help but smile as he leaned against the kitchen counter and studied her. “How drunk are you?”

She tilted her head to the side. “Not drunk enough to have to stay awake, but drunk enough that I don’t want to walk all the way to my bed.”

“You’re going to sleep there at the kitchen table? In front of our awful new TV?”

Sakura scoffed. “I haul you up an entire flight of stairs, and you won’t even help me get to my bed? I take it back, you’re a mean person.”

Kakashi sighed. “I do kind of owe you, don’t I?”

She nodded haughtily as he filled up a glass of water for her at the sink. “Drink all of this and then I’ll carry you back to your bed.”

She eyed him skeptically before she took the glass of water and chugged it in a few large gulps.

“You have quite the tolerance,” he said. “Pretty impressive that you could out drink Obito.”

Sakura shrugged. “Willpower and a mentor who likes to drink.”

“Ah,” he replied, returning the newly empty glass to the sink. He would wash it tomorrow. He was feeling a little buzzed and lazy himself.

He returned to the chair and without ceremony scooped Sakura up. She yelped but then winced, as if a hangover headache was already starting to set in. He felt her rest her forehead against his chest as if she were trying to press the headache away, wisps of her hair tickling his neck. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead and shouldered the door open to her semi-messy room.

“Did you at least have some fun,” he heard her ask.

He glanced down in surprise and remembered why he had been so focused on looking straight ahead _only_. She had very green eyes that were very close to him. He reflexively dumped her on her bed.

“I actually did,” he said as she glared at him for the rough landing. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

“Good,” she snapped. “Glad you came out the other end of this with a good time and probably just a small hangover. I’m going to be miserable tomorrow.”

He nodded seriously. “Yes, you will be very hungover.”

She burrowed under her covers like a mole and he watched with amusement before he echoed her question back to her. “Did you have a good time, Sakura?”

She paused in her efforts to burrow deeper under the covers and seemed to ponder the question. “I did,” she finally said. “Ino is right. I should do these things more often.”

Kakashi shrugged. “I like it when it’s just us in the apartment too.”

She gazed up at him, only the top half of her face visible among all the blankets. He was struck by the thought that he was seeing her face as she saw his—half-concealed, just a pair of eyes watching him.

“I like it too,” she said quietly.

Kakashi nodded, suddenly uncomfortable with his conflicting urges to both get the hell out of the room and to stay and keep chatting. He decided the former was safer and gave her a quick eye crinkle and a wave. Usually at the end of the night he felt the desperate urge to be alone—the new desire to stick around and chat with someone longer than he had to was very disconcerting.

“You know,” he said, pausing by the door. “If you wanted to use your UberEats pet rent order on breakfast tomorrow, I might actually order something for myself too. Just thought I would put it out there.”

The mountain of blankets shifted and Sakura’s head poked out to look at him. “As arbiter of the pent rent ordering, we shall see, but I think the odds are good that I’ll be hungry and unable to cook for myself.”

Kakashi let himself out of the room. “Good night, Sakura,” he called, flicking off the lights and shutting the door behind himself with a soft click.

“Good night,” he heard her call back, her voice muffled behind the door.

He leaned against the wall for a moment, firmly shoving down all the stray thoughts and feelings ricocheting around his head—the clearest of which was a subtle sense of loneliness that had kicked up when he shut the bedroom door. This was stupid. He was drunk and tired, and he just needed to go to sleep.

But he had enjoyed his night, he thought somewhat unwillingly as he fell into his own bed. He heard Pakkun trotting in and leaping onto the covers by his feet to curl up for the night.

Something had made being social much easier, and he absolutely refused to spend any time thinking about what it could have been _(what he knew it was)._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am completely incapable of holding onto a chapter after i have written it. my smooth brain hates editing lololol whoops. i enjoyed all the comments about the Rin and Obito excitement so much that this giant 7k chapter monster was born in a single feverish writing session this morning! i am having so much fun, and your kind words are very, very motivating!
> 
> the next couple chapters won't have any drinking in them-- ive been using it as a bit of a crutch to have them acting silly, but we'll see some other scenarios play out. (is it also obvious i miss hanging out with friends and being able to show up randomly on their doorsteps?) gai might make an appearance soon, as he has thus far been unfairly excluded (by me). 
> 
> thanks for reading! lmk if you want a link to the absolutely cringey and massive playlist ive made for this fic lol


	5. Chapter 5

Sakura stumbled over the doorstep on Wednesday night, her head foggy and exhausted. Her eyes were still feeling strained from making out the absurdly small font on her seminar professor’s slides. She rubbed her temples thinking that maybe it was time to admit she needed glasses.

“Hey,” she called out, waiting for the usual grunt of recognition she received from Kakashi each night before she barricaded herself in her room to study. When it didn’t come, she frowned and checked her watch. It was 6:45, or in other words, reading time on the couch for Kakashi. While he was deeply unpredictable on many levels, he was very predictable when it came to his reading schedule.

She wandered around the corner and found him hunched over on the living area couch, cradling Pakkun in his arms. His shoulders had a new and brittle tension in them. She frowned and took a slow step forward.

“Is everything okay?”

“No,” Kakashi said, his voice curt and low. “Pakkun is sick.”

Sakura felt her stomach drop. She might have only known Kakashi for a month or so, but she had come to understand that there were a few privileged things in his life that he took very, very seriously. In her mind, the category of Kakashi’s Important Things consisted of Pakkun, his porn books, and his quiet time at the end of the day. Interference with any of these Important Things would likely be devastating.

“Sick in what way?”

He glanced up as she drew nearer, and she saw a completely new undertone of fear and frustrated helplessness behind the sharpness in his eyes.

“I don’t know—he was fine when I left for class this morning and when I came back his eye was sealed shut and oozing with something.”

She sat beside Kakashi on the couch, careful to give him his space. The energy he was giving off was like that of a tightly coiled wire ready to snap. “Can I see him?”

Kakashi hesitated for half a second before he handed Pakkun over to her. Sakura held the small dog in her hands and gazed into his little wrinkled face. His left eye was indeed crusted shut with the green gunk of a nasty infection. The little dog stared at her plaintively with one big brown eye as if to say _fix me_. She sighed and gave his head a small scratch.

Given the way Kakashi was behaving, she had thought Pakkun was on his death bed. The infection was bad—and definitely out of her wheelhouse as someone training to be a _human_ doctor—but it could probably be fixed easily enough with topical antibiotics. Kakashi was overreacting just a bit, but she understood the personal panic one felt when their favorite person or animal was unwell. She saw it each time she shadowed Tsunade at the hospital.

“I tried to get him to a vet,” Kakashi said, his voice taut. “I called four, but all of them are booked for at least the next week. One said I could call at 8am tomorrow and see if there is a cancellation.” He cracked a strained smile. “I was debating just showing up with him.”

Before Sakura could stop herself, she felt her hospital bedside manner training kick in the way it did when she reassured anxious loved ones waiting outside of Tsunade’s operating room. She set a comforting hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

When she realized what she had done she froze and nearly expected him to smack her hand away. At first he stiffened, but then she felt a tiny bit of tension slip away underneath her hand. He leaned almost imperceptibly into the soothing touch and her stomach flipped. She forced herself to take in a normal breath and sternly forced her thoughts back to the problem at hand.

“I think Pakkun is going to be fine as long as we get him some antibacterial ointment gentle enough for his eyes. I have a friend in vet school who can help us out. His family lives above a clinic and I’m sure they can squeeze Pakkun in tonight.”

Kakashi’s eyes flashed to hers, suddenly bright with hope. Then they immediately clouded back over with worry as he frowned and scrutinized her. “Are you sure? Don’t you have work to do right now?”

“Nope,” Sakura lied. He raised a disbelieving eyebrow and she sighed. “Yes, but this is more important. None of the work is due tomorrow.”

Kakashi watched her for a long moment, his sharp, bright eyes traveling over her face as if he was searching for something. She ignored the responding thrill in her chest as she met his gaze evenly. “Are you sure,” he finally asked. “He’s my dog. It’s my responsibility.”

Sakura shrugged. “I’m training to become someone who can help those who are hurt and in distress. You are in distress, and Pakkun is hurt. This is exactly what I should be doing.” 

Something flickered in his gaze before he nodded. “Alright, then. Thank you, Sakura.”

“No problem,” she said, feeling a little breathless at the soft tone of voice he had used when he said her name.

She passed Pakkun back to Kakashi and fished her phone out of her pocket. She found Kiba’s old contact and forced her sense of trepidation away as she hit the dial button. Kiba had a big personality, but he also had a soft spot for dogs. She had no doubt he would be willing to help. When she saw a bit of anxiety and uncertainness lingering on Kakashi’s face, she set the phone down in her lap and put it on speaker.

“Sakura?” Kiba asked as he picked up, the sound of barking dogs muffled in the background.

“Hey, Kiba—”

“Well, well, well, it is a little early in the evening for a booty call, but I knew it was only a matter of time before you gave in.”

“Oh, shut up, Kiba,” she snapped. “I have a _patient_ for you. Or more specifically, for your sister since I doubt you know what you’re doing yet.”

Kakashi raised his eyebrows at her and she just shook her head. Kiba was the same brand of flirt as Genma, if not a little bolder and raunchier. Outright hostility was the best way to deal with him.

“You mean you can’t fix _the patient_ yourself, Miss Prodigy? Last I heard from all the little med school wannabes, you were—”

“Cute to hear you’re keeping tabs on me, but this is serious,” she snapped, studiously ignoring Kakashi’s gaze. “You know that both you and I can’t prescribe anything yet—though it’s doubtful you’ll ever be allowed to—and my friend’s pug has a nasty eye infection that needs to be looked at ASAP.”

There was a long moment of silence filled only by the distant barking of dogs. Finally, Kiba sighed. “I’m only doing this because you helped me pass that awful ochem final junior year. And because I love dogs, but that’s a given. Since this is such a huge favor, and in the middle of the week no less, you’re going to have to _say it_.”

Sakura felt her face burn. She flapped her hand in irritation at Kakashi, whose eyebrows had shot back up in interest. “Absolutely not, Kiba. Where is your sense of integrity? A dog is suffering and you can—”

“You know, I was thinking about turning in early. I have a long day tomorrow, so maybe I should just go to sleep.”

“Fine,” Sakura hissed. “Fine, you absolute asshole, _fine_.”

“I hear name calling but no—”

“Being a vet is much harder than being a doctor,” Sakura said, her fingers pressed against the bridge of her nose in an unsuccessful attempt to hold back both fury and a headache. “Animals are much more complicated than humans, and vets are much smarter than doctors.”

“And?”

Sakura began to see red. “And you, Kiba, are the smartest, most handsome vet of them all.”

Kiba cackled, wheezing into the phone. “Damn, I should have recorded it. Can you say it again?”

“I’ll be there in fifteen, _you asshole_. And make sure Hana is there to double check your work since you’re still on training wheels.”

She jammed her finger on the end call button and let out a soft scream under her breath. Then she remembered Kakashi was sitting beside her and turned to look at him almost unwillingly. His grey eyes were gleaming with amusement as he watched her, his chin resting on his palm.

“So I take it there is a longstanding rivalry between vets and doctors?”

“Only the immature ones,” Sakura grumbled, leaning back onto the couch with a long sigh. “He will never let this go, ever.”

Kakashi’s eyes softened. Sakura nearly thought she was hallucinating when he set a tentative hand on her knee. “I know you’re making several personal sacrifices to do this. I just want you to know I really appreciate it.”

As he trailed off he suddenly became sheepish. His hand darted back as she stared at him, hanging onto every word and resisting the urge to snatch his hand and put it back. She nodded slowly as a soft feeling rose up in her chest.

“I’m happy to do it. I know this is important to you.”

He stood, not quite meeting her eyes. “Do you want to drive or should I?”

“I can drive. You can carry Pakkun in your lap even though he’s starting to prefer me now.”

Kakashi rolled his eyes. “I am now, and forever will be, Pakkun’s favorite human.”

“I don’t know about that,” Sakura said, pushing herself up from the couch and making her way to the door. “I’ve been sneaking him a lot of treats when you aren’t looking.”

She felt Kakashi’s glare on the back of her head as he followed her. “You better not be. Those are bad for him if he eats too many.”

Sakura shot him a smirk over her shoulder and shrugged. “Well, it has been going on for several weeks and you haven’t noticed, so it can’t be too bad for him.”

“Consider it noticed,” he snapped. He looked down at Pakkun who was stone-faced in his arms. “Are you accepting illicit treats, Pakkun?”

Pakkun just stared ahead blankly and Kakashi sighed. “Liars all around me,” he complained.

“Oh, I don’t think he’s lying,” Sakura said innocently as she made her way down the stairs to the garage. “He’s just omitting an important truth. I wonder who he learned that from.”

Sakura kept looking ahead, but she would have bet just about anything that Kakashi was smiling behind her.

* * *

Sakura pulled up to a narrow two-story shingled building with a large sign that read Inuzuka Animal Clinic. Kakashi watched as she killed the engine and sighed, shooting him a quick look out of the corner of her eye.

“Okay, just a heads up—Kiba can be a little obnoxious. Think along the lines of Genma if Genma had joined a frat. He’s still super smart and his family has been doing this for literal generations, so Pakkun will be in very good hands.”

Kakashi just shrugged. He could deal with obnoxiousness. He held Pakkun closer to his chest and glanced down to see if his eye had changed at all.

The small pug was one of the pillars of his life—he was there each morning to loudly jingle the leash in his mouth by the bed, and he was there each evening to curl up at the end of the bed, his small face oddly solemn. Perhaps the most frustrating part of the whole situation was that if there was a being on the planet that deserved not to suffer, it would be Pakkun. And Kakashi could do absolutely nothing to help him.

“Hey, Pakkun is going to be just fine.”

Kakashi looked back over at Sakura, her voice rich and soothing. He could tell it was the kind of voice she used with skittish patients, but right now she looked like anything but a doctor. She was slumped over her steering wheel in her favorite giant hoodie, wisps of hair escaping from the bun at the nape of her neck and a golden streak of light from a streetlamp stretching over the side of her face.

In short, she was exhausted, overworked, and dealing with an obnoxious friend in the middle of the week specifically for him. And she was painfully lovely.

Kakashi had a wide spectrum of problems, many of which he implicitly refused to acknowledge. Very few of these problems fell into the category of ‘easily solvable’ but that was exactly what Sakura had made this crisis. She had walked into the apartment, taken a close look at him, and figured out a solution. He was still reeling from the experience, and he was simply overwhelmed by the utter relief of having been helped, and not having needed to ask for the help in the first place.

“Ready to go?”

He blinked and found Sakura watching him, her green eyes sharp as she searched his face for signs of distress. He just crinkled his eyes back in response. “Yes, let’s go meet your obnoxious friend.”

She nodded and gave him a soft smile. He forced his gaze away and held Pakkun closer to his chest as he let himself out of the car. Sakura strode up to the front door and had nearly started to bang on it with her fist when it swung open before her.

A tall man with wild brown hair stood in the golden pool of light seeping over the doorway. He gave Sakura a wolfish grin and then stepped back to give her a good look up and down.

“Looking good, Dr. Sakura. Glad you see you dressed up for me. Loving the overworked student in pajamas look. I _especially_ like the shorts—”

“Oh, shut up, Kiba,” Sakura snapped. “It’s like 7pm on a Wednesday, do you have literally _any_ nonsleezy hours of the week when you conduct yourself like a regular human, or is life just your perpetual frat party?”

Kiba snickered and shrugged. “What can I say? I think you just bring it out of me.”

Kakashi, for reasons he was absolutely unwilling to explore, was liking Kiba less and less each second.

Sakura huffed. “Are you going to make us stand out here all fucking night—”

“Jeez, jeez, come in then,” Kiba said, raising his hands in self-defense as Sakura stomped past him. “I forget how touchy you get when you’re tired. I bet you’re already cramming for The Boards even though you don’t even take them until the end of the year. You gotta relax a bit, Sakura.”

Kakashi followed Sakura into a warm well-lit waiting room. There were a few overstuffed and worn-looking couches with bowls of treats sitting out. A big corkboard on the wall was overflowing with pictures of pets and their grinning owners.

“You must be the friend with the pug.”

Kakashi turned back to Kiba and forced his face into friendliness. “Yes, that would be me. I’m Kakashi and Pakkun is the one with the bad eye.”

“Can I see him?”

Kakashi fought back the instinctual _no_ , reminding himself that Kiba was the one with the power to help Pakkun. He somewhat unwillingly held the pug out and tried not to feel like he was abandoning him.

A hand rested itself lightly on his back and he nearly jumped, but then he realized it was just Sakura again with her uncanny ability to sense moments of peak stress. He had surprised himself earlier by accepting the soft touch she had given him on his shoulder—he had debated trying to tactfully shrug it off, or pretending it wasn’t there, but it had felt so genuinely _kind_ that he hadn’t been able to muster up the willpower.

Even now he found himself leaning back into the hand on his back, reveling in the small, silent gesture of support that had come so easily and without request.

Kiba peered down into Pakkun’s face and frowned thoughtfully. “Yeah, this one is a doozy. We’ll get him cleaned up and send you home with some ointment. I’ll bring Hana down to take a look, but to me it just seems like a nasty eye infection.”

He glanced up and his look of thoughtfulness melted back into a canine smirk. “Come on back.”

“Are you sure we should be coming into the back with you,” Sakura asked, her eye twitching. “Isn’t that, you know, the place where only the practitioners should be going? To maintain some illusion of professionalism?”

Kiba gave Sakura a smile that was all teeth and Kakashi was surprised to find that something in his gut tightened as he watched. Odd—he thought distantly. Unwelcome.

“You can come back to keep me company while I work,” Kiba said over his shoulder. “You might even learn something.”

Sakura snorted like an angry mule and then shot Kakashi a chagrined look. He just shrugged. He was inclined to support her distaste for Kiba.

They stepped back into a room with a long metal exam table flanked by a sink that was covered in an organized chaos of spray bottles and tools. Kiba plunked Pakkun down on the exam table with a quick rumple of his ears. He slid some purple latex gloves on with a practiced ease as he grabbed a bottle of ointment and a small stack of gauze from the sink. He sat himself down on a wheeling chair and scooted over to Pakkun, who watched with a wary and unimpressed expression.

“So, Sakura,” Kiba said, as he began to dab gently at Pakkun’s eye. “I heard you kicked the twerp to the curb. Again.”

Sakura flushed and Kakashi tried not to watch with too much interest. Clearly this had been an ongoing dumpster fire of a relationship, and he found himself morbidly curious about the details. Sakura didn’t strike him as the type of person to let a relationship devolve past its expiration date, but then again, it did seem like she had a strong belief in her ability to repair things.

“It was mutual,” she said curtly.

Kiba shot her a grin. “Oh yeah? Did he ask you to say that?”

“No, Kiba. And why are you so interested?”

“Oh, you know why I’m interested.”

Kakashi was torn between appreciating Kiba for helping Pakkun literally before his eyes, and hating Kiba for acting like he wasn’t even in the room. But then again, why should it matter if he was in the room or not? And why would he be upset in the first place? These were questions with stunningly obvious answers, and Kakashi drove them away with a massive wave of willful ignorance.

Sakura just scowled at Kiba. “Your interest would mean a lot more if I knew you weren’t _interested_ in any woman with a pulse.”

“I still think my marriage plan is brilliant.”

Sakura rolled her eyes and turned to Kakashi with a _can you believe this_ look on her face. He tried not to be too happy about it. “Kiba has this stupid idea that we should open a joint practice—”

“It’s a perfect idea,” Kiba cried as he smoothed away more of the gunk running from Pakkun’s eye. “We’ll be the power couple of the century! You treat the owners, and I treat their pets! A one stop shop for healthcare, regardless of how many legs you have.”

“Yes,” Sakura said with an eye roll. “Because people typically like to receive treatment in the same building as their pets.”

Kiba let out a long and melodramatic sigh. “I suppose it was doomed to fail once you got the whole future prodigy surgeon schtick going. You won’t treat us mortals. You’ll be up on your high horse inventing new procedures—”

“Inventing new procedures doesn’t preclude—”

“Oh right, I forgot,” Kiba snarked. “You can do everything. You’re Tsunade’s perfect little protégé, and you’re grinding yourself into dust to prove it.”

Sakura glowered, but there had been an undertone of sincerity in the last jab. Kakashi gazed at Sakura thoughtfully. There seemed to be a growing pile of clues suggesting that Sakura was in fact an incredibly important person, regardless of all the self-deprecating jokes she made about barely scraping by. He was opening his mouth to ask what exactly _future_ _prodigy surgeon_ meant when Sakura interrupted and changed the subject.

“I don’t think you’ve given me a single good reason as to why I would ever want to work with you.”

Kiba shot her a sly look over Pakkun’s head. “If you want to come upstairs with me for ten minutes I can give you several.”

Kakashi decided that he did not, in fact, like Kiba. Not one bit.

Sakura began swearing so fluently that Kakashi nearly felt like he was obligated to cover Pakkun’s ears when the door banged open against the wall. A tall woman with a low brown ponytail stood there glowering at Kiba, who immediately looked more contrite.

“Hey, Sakura,” the woman said, cutting off her tirade. “I thought I heard you in here. Kiba, what have I told you about bringing people back here to show off? This isn’t going to impress Sakura—she has her own shiny lab with all of her own toys to play with.”

Kiba shrugged. “I wanted the company.”

The woman rolled her eyes and extended her hand to Kakashi. “Hi, I’m Hana. This is your dog?”

“Kakashi. And yes.” Kakashi was pleased to see that he would now be included in the conversation again rather than treated as a silent spectator to the world’s most lewd and one-sided flirting and arguing match.

Hana strode forward and hip checked Kiba out of the way. She gazed down into Pakkun’s eye and fished a small flashlight out of her apron. Pakkun shot Kakashi a side look as if to say _is this really necessary._

After spending a few minutes flicking the the flashlight on and off and tilting Pakkun’s head side to side, Hana leaned back and gave Pakkun a head scratch. “I think it’s just an eye infection, probably just something he picked up on a walk that flared up after you left. We’ll give you some antibiotic ointment for the eye. Apply it twice a day, and make sure you hold up the lid of his eye when you do.”

Relief washed over him. Pakkun would be fine. He would be given medicine to fix the problem. He wouldn’t need to go harass vets tomorrow morning.

“Thank you,” he said, sincerely meaning it.

Hana shot him a smile. “No worries. The little guy was feeling pretty uncomfortable, so I get it.”

She waved briefly at Sakura and walked backwards out of the room. “I still have to feed the other dogs, but it was nice to see you, Sakura. Nice to meet you, Kakashi.”

“Nice to see you, too!” When the door swung shut, Sakura sighed. “She’s so cool.”

“Yes, yes,” Kiba grumbled, already rummaging in a cabinet behind them. “The coolest.”

He emerged with a tiny metal tube of ointment and held it out to Kakashi. “Here you are. The magic elixir.”

Kakashi was still feeling less than inclined to smile at any of Kiba’s jokes. “Thanks, should I pay now or—”

Kiba just waved a hand at him. “Friends and family discount. If Sakura likes you enough to pry herself from her desk on a weeknight, you must be worth it.” He shot her a wicked grin out of the corner of his eye. “Naruto tried carrying her out of the library on a Wednesday once and she nearly gave him a concussion.”

An increasingly familiar warm feeling rose up in his chest at the idea that Sakura had made an exception for _him_. Implying that he, in some way, was exceptional to _her_.

Kakashi found that he suddenly liked Kiba again and accepted the metal tube with a genuine smile in his eyes. “Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

Kiba just shook his head and shuffled back over to the sink. Kakashi snuck a glance at Sakura and found her blushing furiously as she glared at the back of Kiba’s head.

“Though I will say,” Kiba drawled. “Nothing I said got you to rise up and defend her honor, which is already a big improvement from the last possessive little twerp—”

“I can defend my own honor, thank you very much,” Sakura hissed. She snatched Pakkun off the exam table and thrust him into Kakashi’s arms. “Thanks for the help, Kiba. It was as infuriating as ever.” She fixed a tight grip on Kakashi’s arm and hauled him out the door behind her.

“Just remember who the smartest, most handsome vet of all is,” Kiba called after them. “And that vets are smarter than doctors—”

“Like hell they are,” Sakura snarled as she strode through the waiting room with Kakashi in tow and slammed the front door behind them with an ironic cheery jingling of bells.

Kakashi gazed down at her in amusement as she collected herself on the doorstep. Her face was flushed, and more hair had somehow escaped from her bun. Without thinking, or meaning to, he had reached out and tucked a particularly wild piece back behind her ear.

He froze as he realized what he had done.

_That’s really all it would take? Tucking some hair behind your ear to melt you into a puddle?_

Sakura gazed up at him with impossibly green and wide eyes that practically glowed in the warm yellow light filtering out from the panes in the door. She seemed to be remembering the same moment from last week’s party that he was. Suddenly overwhelmed and feeling massively out of his depth, Kakashi cleared his throat loudly and started trudging back to the car.

“Do you want me to drive? I know road rage is something that you’re supposed to feel in response to other drivers, but I have a feeling you have plenty of baseline rage right now.”

There was a long moment of silence and he held his breath before he heard Sakura start to follow him. “I’ll drive,” she said in a voice that was several octaves too high.

They both plunked themselves down in the car, staring straight ahead and refusing to look at one another. Sakura sat with her hands braced on the steering wheel for a long moment. Kakashi was beginning to feel increasingly frightened of what she would say when she finally opened her mouth to speak when she said—

“I’m hungry.”

He looked at her with incredulity and the tension washed away. “You’re hungry?”

“Yeah,” she said defensively. “Being really angry is a lot of work.”

Kakashi grinned. “Fine. Do you want to stop to pick up food? Maybe something green—”

“French fries. We’re getting french fries,” she said, starting the car and swiveling around to check for other cars as she backed out.

“Just French fries? Nothing with the french fries?”

“Remains to be seen.”

He watched her try to smother a small smile and fail, a small upwards turn tugging at the side of her lips. He settled back more comfortably into his seat, scratching Pakkun’s head.

“Well, I guess I have the whole drive there to convince you to get something that would constitute a real dinner in addition to the french fries.”

“I guess you do,” she said. "But I wouldn't bet on you succeeding."

Kakashi decided, as he watched Sakura drive with a small smile on her face, that it hadn’t been a bad night despite everything that had happened. Not at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i had a different chapter planned, but then my cat got a really nasty eye infection and i went through this awful process of calling all these vets that were booked until i finally was able to nab her an appointment, and i felt such STRESS. the panic of a smol furry being you care for being sick?? unmatchable. 
> 
> so i wrote this as complete wish fulfillment. wishing i had a kiba in my life. also an excuse to poke at Kakashi a bit with the raunchy flirting. im not a big fan of possessive / jealous behavior (though it can be fun to explore in fiction) but i do love the very human aspect of quiet and suppressed flickers of jealousy that aren't acted on.... those feel healthier and more fun to me, and this fic is just meant to be, well, fun.
> 
> if anyone wants the giant and quite frankly cringey playlist for this fic, you can find it [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4VeMETSZJQCOmqLSQPEswo) ! i am not claiming this is good music... i am claiming it is sappy music that puts me in the mood to write these idiots™ figuring out how to deal with one another. 
> 
> thank you for reading!!!! i love every single comment and sketch that has been created for this fic and they, quite literally, bring me to tears. i really appreciate the kindness and the engagement in these otherwise wild times. u all are the absolute best.


	6. Chapter 6

Sakura’s phone began to ring on her desk and she nearly jumped out of her skin. She scowled at it. The caller was an unidentified number—probably an obnoxious scam that would try to convince her to give out her social security number in exchange for fake car insurance. She just let it ring and went back to annotating the papers Tsunade had given her that week.

There was a moment of silence and then the phone started up again, sending her back into another small panic. She gave it a nasty look. So what if it was a scammer? Scammers could be yelled at.

She snatched the phone and answered it. “Hello?”

She heard a muffled argument— _I told you not to call a second time, she’ll think it’s weird_. _Uh, weirder than you suddenly getting her number? I don’t think—_

“Hey, Sakura,” a said a voice that was definitely Rin’s as two others yelped in the background. Sakura had a clear mental image of Rin whacking Obito and Genma over the head and snatching the phone from them. “Glad you picked up! Genma got your number from Kakashi yesterday.”

Sakura leaned back in her chair and frowned. “Kakashi gave Genma my number?”

“Gave would be a bit of an exaggeration,” Rin said delicately. “Would you believe Genma _accidentally_ took it from Kakashi’s unlocked phone after something had been, on a completely unrelated note, dumped on him?”

Sakura smiled. “What did Genma dump on Kakashi?”

“Irrelevant,” she heard a voice shout distantly in the background. Rin just sighed.

“Listen, I don’t condone the methods but at least now we can invite you to things! Did Kakashi tell you about his half marathon tomorrow?”

Sakura felt her jaw drop. “ _His_ half marathon? As in, _he_ will be running the half marathon?”

“So I guess that means he didn’t tell you,” Rin said with an irritated huff. “He’s running in the annual one put on by the school tomorrow. It starts at the gates to campus. He’s racing Gai—another good friend of ours you haven’t met.”

“Oh,” Sakura said. “And you think he would be fine with me just showing up?”

“I think he will pretend to be annoyed by it, but deep down he will be pleased.”

Sakura flushed. Part of her wanted to ask what Rin meant, but another part of her _knew_ and had no idea how to handle it. She hadn’t been able to shake the memory of the gentle way he had gazed down at her and unconsciously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear in the golden light in front of Kiba’s clinic.

“Uh, okay, I’ll think about it. I was planning on a bit of a late night tonight—”

“Come on, it will only be a couple hours! Sunlight and fresh air! Usually we walk Pakkun around the fun parts of the course and yell demeaning things when he and Gai have to run uphill. You also get to throw water at them.”

Sakura couldn’t help the smile that curled across her face. Throwing water on Kakashi while he tried to run uphill? How could she say no?

“Okay, if he doesn’t force me to stay here I’ll tag along.”

“Excellent,” Rin said as Obito and Genma whooped in the background. “See you tomorrow at 8!”

“In the morning? 8am in _the_ _morning? On a Saturday?_ Are you serious?”

“See you tomorrow, Sakura!”

Then Rin hung up and Sakura look a long look at her phone, wondering what she had agreed to. The more she thought about it, the more tangled and confusing her thoughts and feelings became. Maybe running half marathons wasn’t a big deal to healthy adults who took care of themselves, but to her it felt like a significant part of one’s life. Like hell she would slink around and sneak to his half marathon when he had never mentioned it to her _once._ She stood up from her desk and stomped into the kitchen where Kakashi was stirring a large pot of pasta.

“When were you going to tell me that you run? And _a lot_ all at once?”

He turned slowly, his eyes guarded but gleaming. “How do you know I run? And that it is _a lot_ all at once _?_ I’ve never seen you wake up before 9am.”

Sakura brandished her phone at him. “Rin invited me to your little marathon!”

He blanched and gave the phone a dark look. “Is that why Genma dumped his old coffee on me yesterday? To steal private information?” His eyes flicked back to Sakura. “And it isn’t a marathon. It’s a _half_ marathon.”

“Big fucking difference,” Sakura snorted. She strode forward and peered down into the massive pot of boiling spaghetti and the pan of red sauce next to it. Somehow it made her angrier that he was in the kitchen cooking a giant carbo-loading meal right under her nose. “It is still _many_ miles.”

“Well, the difference between the two races is exactly 13.1 mi— _ow_!” He glared at her and rubbed his ribs where she had lightly elbowed him. “If you injure me before I run tomorrow—”

“You weren’t going to tell me?”

He gazed at her for a long moment. Sakura tried to wipe the tension from her face, but she could still feel a little bit of the hurt shining through. She wasn’t quite sure why she was so offended—she had called Kakashi her friend last week when she took him to see Kiba, but what else would she have called him? _Her roommate,_ her mind supplied.

Suddenly she felt deeply embarrassed. Who was she to be stomping around acting like she was his best friend just because they cooked together and had dealt with a few shared crises? She felt her face grow warmer and she turned to scuttle back to her room just as his hand latched gently over her wrist.

Her stomach flipped as she turned slowly. He had a bit of a sheepish look in his eyes, and his hand lingered a moment before he let go.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was something you would be interested in. Did you want to come?”

She stared. He had apologized? Just like that? She had been anticipating a snub.

Whenever she and Sasuke argued—and he was really the only person she ever _argued_ with—it typically took the form of long shouting matches. It usually devolved into her bursting into angry tears and storming off for alone time before they mutually pretended the argument hadn’t happened several hours later. Occasionally she would just skip the yelling stage altogether and try to slip away from the scene whenever she felt hurt or slighted, much in the same way she had just intended on scuttling back to her room now.

She tried to recall one instance when she or Sasuke had apologized to one another with ease. There had been apologies over the years, but they had been few and far between, and won with a great deal of bitterness and low blows. They had never been simple.

And _this_ had been simple.

She blinked. “Yeah,” she said, trying to process her overload of thoughts and feelings as she spoke. “I would be interested in going.”

He gave her a quick smile with his eyes before he turned back to the giant pot of pasta. “Okay. I’m leaving at 7. Do you want me to bang on your door to wake you up?”

Sakura stared at his back. The almost-feelings flickering at the edges of her mind for the last month or so had been easy enough to dismiss as a fleeting crush. After all, he was an attractive man with a sweet dog who helped her cook—she had rationalized the odd butterflies as an inevitable and tangential detail to living with Kakashi. Crushes were fun. It was fun to fantasize about another person during a long lecture or when grocery shopping.

But as she stood there, realizing how quickly he had been able to observe that he had upset her and _fix_ it with no inflection of ego or pride, she felt the _almost_ -feelings become _actual_ -feelings.

Well.

Shit.

This certainly didn’t mean Kakashi was a paragon of emotional intelligence—it was obvious she had been upset when she stormed in yelling her head off, and she doubted he would fare as well in more subtle situations. But instead of squaring up and telling her to stay out of his business—like he probably would have the first week or so they had lived together—he had just invited her. Like it was easy for him. Like her feelings mattered more than his ego.

“Sakura? You still there?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said quickly, shaking herself out of the disastrous turn her thoughts and feelings had taken. “Bang on my door when you get up, but whatever you do, don’t enter. I don’t want to be liable for what happens if you surprise me in a sleepy state.”

He shot her an amused look over his shoulder. “Oh, I’m aware. I felt like I had poked a bear the last time I woke you up.”

She smiled and the newly formed feelings surged up in her chest with a vengeance. Yikes. “Um, okay, I’m going to go finish some work so I can sleep early then.”

He held up a hand in goodbye as she all but fled back to her room. She was just closing the door when another thought struck her. She poked her head back out.

“Hey, Kakashi?”

“Hm?”

“Are you going to eat all the pasta?”

He turned and gave her an exasperated look. “Why? Is there a gremlin somewhere in the apartment who doesn’t know how to politely ask for some of the pasta?”

“Potentially.”

He sighed wearily and turned back to the stove to add a generous amount of dry pasta to the boiling water. “There. Now there will be extra pasta.”

“But now that you’ve added that to the pasta that was already there, won’t it cook unevenly—”

“Does the gremlin want pasta or not?”

Sakura grinned. “It does. Thank you!”

He was shaking his head as she slipped back into her room and shut the door behind herself. She leaned against it, taking in a long and slow breath.

She realized that despite his sharp edges and emotional walls, Kakashi’s dry and imperturbable sense of self-confidence made it hard to prod him into reacting angrily. This also made it shockingly easy for him to defuse her bigger emotions, perhaps without even realizing what he was doing.

Sakura allowed herself, for one dangerous moment, to consider what it would be like to be in a relationship with someone who didn’t bring their pride with them as the referee to an argument.

She smiled. It was a nice idea.

* * *

When her alarm went off at 6:30am, Sakura decided that Kakashi was absolutely batshit insane and that she wanted nothing to do with him. She smacked the snooze button hard enough that the alarm clock creaked beneath her hand. She was nearly slipping back to sleep when banging started on her door. She would kill him.

“Sakura, I can hear you breaking things! Does that mean you’re awake?”

“If you come in here I’ll break you,” she mumbled sleepily into her pillow.

“What?”

“Go away,” she called, slightly louder.

“I would, but I think somehow you’ll be angrier with me if I let you sleep through it. I’m hedging my bets here.”

Sakura groaned and rolled onto her back. “This is hell,” she yelled.

“I agree,” he called back, far too cheerfully. “But I think you’ll have a fun time. We’re getting breakfast afterwards, and if I win the race Gai has to buy mine. I can sneak you some hash browns.”

The mention of food made her stir. “Free food?” Then she scowled suspiciously and stared up at her dark ceiling. “You’re sure you’re going to win?”

“Most likely.”

She let out a long sigh. Well. She was already awake. “Can you come help me get up?”

There was a long beat of silence. “I was explicitly told not to enter your room when you were sleepy and dangerous.”

“I take it back. I can’t move.”

The door creaked open and Kakashi poked his head in cautiously. When nothing was thrown at him, he crept slowly over to the bed and peered down at her. She looked back up through squinted eyes, and then stuck her hands up.

“Pull me up.”

“What are you, six?” Her eyes flashed dangerously and he sighed, latching two strong hands over her wrists and pulling her up into a sitting position. She scrubbed at her face with the heel of her hand and yawned.

“What time did you even go to bed,” he asked, eyeing her with a mix of begrudging concern and exasperation.

“I dunno, like 3am?”

“You decided to live through today on three hours of sleep?”

“I would argue the circumstances of my life deprive me of the free will to choose how much sleep—”

“Okay, okay, it’s time to get up, John Locke.”

“What,” she asked sleepily. “Why are you calling me that?”

He put his shoulder under her arm and gently hauled her out of the bed so that she was standing, albeit a little shakily. “You were just going on about the philosophy of determinism,” he said, steering her towards the door. “Free will, or the lack thereof?”

Sakura regarded him suspiciously through eyes that were still half shut. “I forget you read things that aren’t porn.”

He chuckled and she felt it vibrate in the shoulder he was still using to prop her up. “And I try so hard to hide it, too.”

He eased her out into the brightness of the hallway and she hissed at the light. Kakashi shook his head. “You’re so dramatic.”

She gradually eased herself off his shoulder, still rubbing at her eyes and too tired to deal with the angry voices in her head demanding to know why she was moving further away from him rather than closer.

“Alright, go on then,” she said, flapping her hand toward the kitchen. “I’ll be ready in like fifteen.”

He shuffled off and she tried to force herself into a state of waking awareness. Papers be damned—tonight she would be getting a full 8 hours of sleep and no one could stop her. She followed Kakashi to the kitchen and ignored him as she dumped far too many coffee grounds into the French press. She wanted coffee so strong that it would singe the roof of her mouth.

When she had finally gotten her first sip of caffeine and started feeling like a human being again, she looked over at him. He was leaning against the counter and staring vacantly at the wall with a bowl of oatmeal in his hands.

It was the first time she was awake early enough to see him in his pajamas rather than his trademark hoodie and the alternating sweatpants and black jeans. All of her earlier guesses had been absolutely right—his arms were covered in the wiry lean muscle that she associated with the people who scaled large rocks for fun. She forced away a blush and looked at his t-shirt. There was some kind of chicken scratch writing on it.

“Oh my god!”

Kakashi jolted and nearly dropped his bowl of oatmeal. He shot her a glare. “What?”

“Your shirt!”

He looked down at it, bemused. “What about it?”

“What it says!”

“Oh yeah. Genma got it for me.”

The print read, _I have a big dick_ , but _have_ had been scribbled over with what looked like faded sharpie, and an angry _AM_ had been written above it.

Sakura gaped and Kakashi just rolled his eyes. “Genma studied abroad during undergrad and as a joke he came back with a bunch of generic novelty gifts for us that could have been bought literally anywhere else in the world. He bought me this shirt on his last night when he was blackout drunk.”

“And the… edits?”

“Genma didn’t realize that the shirt was, in his mind, the highest possible compliment. He couldn’t go back to get a different gift, so he took it upon himself to make changes to the shirt before he gave it to me.”

Sakura gazed at the phrase critically. “And you’re wearing it because?”

Kakashi shrugged. “It’s comfortable. It was free.”

“Ah.” Sakura gazed at it for another long moment. “You’re not wearing it to the half marathon are you?”

“Why? Do you think I should?”

Sakura sputtered and Kakashi just watched, amused, before he put his bowl of half-finished oatmeal in the sink. “No, I’m not wearing this shirt. I have actual running shirts. You should eat something besides coffee before we leave—it’ll be a couple hours before breakfast.”

Sakura glared at his retreating back before she went over to her cabinet and snatched a protein bar from her hoard. Yet again, she wondered what she had gotten herself into.

* * *

“KAKASHI!”

Sakura flinched at the loud bellow, and she sensed Kakashi cringing next to her as well. There was a blur of green and then Kakashi was thrown back in a tackling hug. Sakura stared and realized the green blur was a man decked out in green running gear with a shiny black bowl cut that was held back with a bright orange headband. Kakashi patted the green man’s back weakly.

“Hello, Gai.”

“Hey, Sakura!”

Sakura turned to find Rin, Obito, and Genma approaching at a much slower pace. Obito grinned over her head at Kakashi and the man that Sakura now knew was Gai.

“Don’t break him, Gai. That would be cheating.”

Gai pulled back and thumped Kakashi hard on the back. Kakashi let out a quiet _oof_ at the impact. “I would never dream of it,” Gai cried. “The contest is only worth it if we are both performing at our best!”

He suddenly swiveled to Sakura and she took an involuntary step backwards. She did _not_ want a hug like the one Kakashi had gotten. Instead he thrust out a hand for her to shake and—were those _tears_ in his eyes?

“You must be the lovely Sakura! I’ve heard much about you from Rin and Obito. It is an _honor_ to finally meet such a special woman.”

Sakura blinked and mentally replayed the sentence to see if there was anything in it she should be offended by. It all checked out as oddly flattering and sweet. She shook his hand with a warm smile.

“It’s really nice to meet you, Gai. I hope you have a good race today.”

“You sure about that?” Genma asked, stepping forward and slinging an arm over Sakura’s shoulders. “You mean you aren’t on Kakashi’s side?”

Sakura shrugged Genma off with an exasperated look. “Come on, seriously? You’re friends with both of them. Are there really sides?”

Everyone, even Kakashi and Rin who were typically the voices of reason, deadpanned back at her. “Oh yeah,” Rin said. “There are sides.”

“And a lot of money involved— _ow!”_ Obito grouched as Rin not-so-subtly kicked his foot.

“I’m rooting for Gai,” Genma said. “And certain other people are betting on Kakashi.”

“So who are you rooting for, Sakura,” Obito piped up.

All eyes fixed on her and Sakura felt a pulse of panic at being the center of their combined attention. Kakashi’s gaze in particular felt heavier than normal. She swallowed.

“I guess I’ll root for Kakashi. If he loses I’ll have to deal with him being cranky afterwards.”

Rin and Obito cheered, but Sakura didn’t miss the small smile that touched Kakashi’s eyes as he turned away and started stretching.

A loud voice blared on a megaphone, _“HALF AN HOUR UNTIL RACE TIME. RUNNERS PREPARE TO GATHER AT THE STARTING LINE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES.”_

Sakura cringed and covered her ears. “So fucking loud… So fucking early.”

Genma patted her on the back. “I get it— I’m also awake against my will. But you’re not even going to make any money off this. I pity you.”

Sakura shot him a glare and was opening her mouth to give him a deeply rude response when she was interrupted by Gai.

“My dear rival and I must do some jogging to warm up! We shall see you at the starting line!”

He saluted comically and then latched onto Kakashi’s arm, hauling him off so quickly that Kakashi nearly missed fumbling Pakkun’s leash to Sakura. The small pug wuffled at her feet as he watched his owner disappear into the press of runners. Sakura’s eyes lingered on Kakashi’s back as he left. He didn’t look bad running. Not one bit.

“So are they actually super fast,” she asked, turning back to the group. “How serious is this race going to be?”

Rin grinned. “Oh, they’re pretty fast. There are a couple hundred serious runners here so they aren’t going to be taking home any medals, but they’ll do an impressive job.”

“Do they race like this often?”

Obito shrugged. “Do they race often? I guess. Do they compete often? Absolutely.”

Sakura tilted her head to the side. “Compete?”

Genma began ticking things off on his fingers. “Breath holding contests, balance contests, swimming contests, weightlifting contests, climbing contests, speed skating contests, roller blading contests…” He frowned and trailed off.

“Eating contests,” Obito supplied.

Genma grinned. “Right. How could I have forgotten that one?”

“So who usually wins?”

“They both do,” Genma said. “It’s pretty close to 50:50. I can’t remember the exact tally, but if you want a forty-minute theatrical reenactment of all the contests, you can ask Gai after the race.”

Sakura was beginning to understand. “So this is why it’s so fun to bet on them—they’re evenly matched.”

“Right,” Rin said in a brittle voice. “But some of us are supposed to be saving for a wedding.”

Obito flushed. “I swear it’s a good idea! Sakura is here and he’s going to want to impress—”

Rin nudged him with her elbow to get him to stop talking and she flashed Sakura a cheesy and somewhat guilty grin. “Obito says silly things when he’s tired.”

Sakura pressed away a small smile and took a sip of coffee from the warm thermos she had brought with her. “So let me see if I understand the Kakashi-Gai rivalry. If one of them jumped off a bridge, the other would follow and try to fall faster?”

“Yes,” Rin said, nodding seriously. “Exactly.”

“Didn’t they do that once,” Obito muttered, his face scrunched in an attempt to remember. “I feel like there was something with bungee jumping.”

Rin patted his back. “No, sweetie, that was just a nightmare.”

“Right…” he said, seeming unconvinced.

Rin smiled at Sakura. “Obito is a paramedic. He’s seen a lot of bad decisions lead to bad accidents.”

_“RUNNERS TO THE STARTING LINE.”_

Sakura jumped and swore, looking around for the person with the bullhorn. Clearly someone had let the power of amplified volume go to their head. Sakura typically preferred to be the loudest source of noise in her environment.

“That’s our signal!” Genma looped his arm through Sakura’s and began to tug her and Pakkun off toward the crowd gathering around the starting line at the gates to the university. “Come along, Pinky!”

She gave him a dark look but allowed herself to be towed as Rin and Obito followed. “You are not the first to have tried that nickname, and I do not like it one bit.”

Genma twirled his toothpick in his teeth. “So Pinky,” he said as if he hadn’t heard her. “If a man wanted to impress a certain blonde woman, where would he take her for a night on the town?”

Sakura turned to Genma in surprise. “Ino is letting you take her on a date?”

“Yup, next week. Why the surprise? Not all women are frustratingly immune to my charms.”

Sakura rolled her eyes. “That’s great. She typically doesn’t do that sort of thing with her… conquests.”

“Oh really,” Genma asked, a thoughtful smirk curling around his lips. “I suppose that means I’m not like her typical conquests.”

Sakura just shook her head. “You two are going to destroy each other.”

“Look who’s talking,” Genma snarked.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Let’s just say I saw some shared grocery lists when I was extracting a certain phone number from a certain phone. Rather domestic, wouldn’t you say?”

Sakura scowled. “So what if we share groceries and cook together sometimes? What’s the big deal?”

_“Cook together?”_ Genma howled with laughter and turned over his shoulder to call back to Rin and Obito. “Did you hear that? They _cook_ together.”

Rin gave Sakura a radiant grin. “That is _great_. Very economical.”

Obito frowned. “Once I had some of his chips without asking and then he started booby trapping them.”

Sakura was blushing furiously and ready to say something she would no doubt regret later when they finally made it to the starting line. Sakura scooped Pakkun up so he wouldn’t get trampled while Genma and Rin elbowed through the crowd of spectators as if they had done it a hundred times before. They secured a spot by the low metal fence where they could see the runners on the starting line. They all seemed to be bouncing on the balls of their feet and looking very serious.

Sakura went up on her tippy toes as she scratched Pakkun’s ears. She spotted a familiar head of silver hair and zeroed in. Kakashi had the rare and sharp look of focus in his grey eyes again, and it sent a thrill down the back of her spine. He stretched on one leg, his eyes fixed ahead with a quiet intensity on the open course that lead up into campus.

Rin and Genma wasted no time in beginning to make as much noise as humanly possible to get Kakashi and Gai’s attention. Finally Gai noticed and paused mid-bounce to wave back cheerily. He nudged Kakashi who looked over as well.

Sakura caught his eye and grinned. _Good luck_ she mouthed. He just shrugged, but she felt certain that there was a small smirk on his face under his bandana. Then the person with the loud bullhorn and power complex was screaming instructions again, and Kakashi’s eyes shifted away from hers and back into a steely concentration.

Sakura watched as he bent one knee, poised to run in absolute rigidity. The sound of people chattering quieted as the countdown began.

_Three…Two…._

Then the electric crackle of the blank starting pistol rippled through the air. The crowd of bodies on the starting line surged forward in a roiling mass of color and energy.

Kakashi and Gai took off sprinting at the front of the group, and Sakura couldn’t help but admire the way Kakashi’s body moved like a well-oiled machine with long and even strides, his arms and legs pumping in a perfect tandem. Yesterday she had only ever seen him slouched over a book or laying back idly on the couch. Now it seemed absurd that he could ever be thought of as stationary—he suddenly seemed like a figure that would forever be blurred in motion with the electricity of adrenaline.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Sakura startled and looked at Rin who had a knowing smile on her face.

“They won’t run the whole 13 miles that fast, will they?”

“No, they both just like to start off strong. They’ll settle into a more comfortable speed after the first mile.”

“Ready to go find a place to ambush them?” Genma asked with a wicked grin.

Obito fished a brochure with a map on it out of his jacket pocket. “I’ll find the biggest hill.”

* * *

Pakkun was having the time of his life with all the new people and smells. His little nose twitched furiously as he sniffed the air, and plenty of admirers had come to coo over him. Apparently it took Kakashi and Gai around an hour and a half to finish a half marathon, which was considered very impressive by most but obnoxiously long by Sakura. They were a little over forty-five minutes into it now.

Obito led them to the top of a very steep hill a couple blocks behind the university campus and passed out the cups of water he had stolen from one of the water stations. He checked his phone and grinned. “Alright, they should be here in a couple minutes.”

Sakura gazed down the long and steep hill. It would have taken her ten or fifteen minutes to hike it if she were walking. There was no sum of money on earth that would have convinced her to run it with people watching.

Just as she was thinking that fresh air and sunlight were overrated, Genma whooped. She squinted down at the base of the hill and saw gleaming silver hair next to a bobbing bowl cut. They were both running much faster than Sakura would have considered safe or healthy for a thirteen mile race. 

Sakura was shocked to see that neither of them slowed when they hit the hill. They just adjusted form and continued booking it up the slope, completely undeterred by the added difficulty. They even seemed to have the exact same stride length and cadence as one another. “Damn,” she mumbled under her breath.

“I know,” Genma said between cheering. “Imagine torturing yourself like this.”

Sakura couldn’t. But then again, she absolutely could as the queen of another, more stationary, form of self-torture.

When Kakashi and Gai grew close enough to hear, she started yelling her own encouragement. Kakashi and Gai spared them a glance as they approached. Both had wild eyes full of adrenaline and flushed faces.

Kakashi had the same steely fierceness in his eyes as he did on the starting line, his arms pumping up and down with a sharp level of control, no energy or movement wasted. He was like a force of nature, absolutely single-minded in pursuit of his goal—it was paradoxically both like him and unlike him at the same time. Sakura was beginning to think that Kakashi was a jumble of contradictions, and the process of trying to unravel them all was seeming more and more appealing with each new piece of information she learned about him. 

She was so caught up in watching him that Obito had to nudge her. “We splash on three.”

She nodded as he began the countdown. On three, they all sloshed their cups forward and dumped a wave of water on Kakashi and Gai just as they entered their range. Neither so much as flinched at the sudden deluge, and they just surged on past. They crested the hill and disappeared from sight as they dashed down the other side.

Genma sighed. “I wish they would react. Just once.”

Rin patted his back. “I know, Genma. I know.”

* * *

Sakura checked her watch and gazed at the last several hundred-foot stretch leading up to the finish line. “You said any minute now?”

“Yes,” Obito affirmed for the second time, amusement in his voice. “Any minute now.”

They were standing off to the side of the stretch of grass that followed the finish line. A few flushed runners had already come along and practically collapsed as soon as they finished. They all had to be led to the water station, staggering and gasping for breath. Sakura thought it was supremely unwise to put such unnecessary strain on one’s body.

Then she heard Kakashi’s dry voice telling her she was a massive hypocrite in her mind, and she smiled.

A sharp elbow started banging on her ribs and Rin jumped up and down. “Here they come!”

Sakura looked at the end of the field where Kakashi and Gai had just rounded the bend. They were each running all out now, hair flying and arms snapping up and down in a startling unison—Sakura couldn’t believe they had spent the last thirteen miles running at the same pace in a complete deadlock. Part of her nearly thought they would finish in an exact tie, but then she watched as absurdly, impossibly, Kakashi’s stride began to lengthen just a bit.

She was caught up in all the screaming that was coming not just from their group of friends, but also from the other spectators watching the mad race, and she found herself jumping up and down and yelling at the top of her lungs. Pakkun barked somewhere near her feet. Secondhand adrenaline rushed through her veins as she watched Kakashi’s face tighten with pain, and just when she thought he couldn’t move any faster—he did.

He sped across the finish just half a step before Gai did. Sakura screamed along with all the other spectators and followed Rin and Obito as they jogged over to meet them.

It became evidently clear that both Kakashi and Gai had overextended themselves. Gai collapsed directly into Rin and Obito’s arms, nearly bringing all three of them tumbling to the ground. Kakashi was still trying to slow down and lose momentum, and Sakura shot Genma a questioning look to see if he would help her catch him, which he pointedly ignored. Finally she just shoved Pakkun’s leash into Genma’s hands with a muttered, “Asshole,” while he just smirked and pretended not to notice her.

She jogged over to where Kakashi was beginning to stagger into a walking pace.

“Hey,” she said as she drew up beside him. She pressed a tentative hand to his arm. “You doing alright— _oof._ ”

At her touch, Kakashi immediately keeled over much in the same way Gai had. He fell into her side, and Sakura staggered under the sudden weight of his heavy and warm body. She managed to pull his arm over her shoulders and she pressed herself against his side to hold him up and lead him off towards the water station. He was still breathing too heavily to speak, his bandana fluttering against her ear as she tried to figure out how to walk with him. She could feel his shuddering breaths rattling in his ribcage that was pressed against her own.

“You are so sweaty,” she finally managed, deciding it was the least dangerous thing she could say as her pulse quickened. “Ick.”

He laughed weakly. “What,” he finally managed between wheezing breaths. “No congratulations?”

She glanced up into his eyes. They were still glowing with the bright remnants of adrenaline and the high of winning. Kakashi was like a magnetic force that sucked people into his orbit whenever he shed his lazy and disinterested persona, and in this moment, he was like a beam of human electricity, sharp, full of energy, _powerful_. Looking at him when he was like this was like staring directly into a bright, overwhelming light.

She wondered if he caught a glimpse of what she was thinking. His gaze grew more intent and focused on hers, a shade of seriousness seeping through all the triumph. She realized that his face was very close, that he was just _one_ breath and a yanked down bandana away from—

The thought of his bandana jolted her from the sharp left turn her mind had taken. Here she was, fantasizing about kissing someone who didn’t even let her look at him.

“Here,” she blurted, reaching in her back pocket with her spare arm and pulling out a folded square of black fabric. She held the fresh bandana out to him to distract herself from the beating of her pulse in her ears. “I knew you would get the other one all gross and sweaty and I didn’t see you grab a spare before you left.”

He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes heavy and bright. “You brought this… for me?” he finally asked, his voice slow and confused. Sakura reminded herself that he had basically just sprinted thirteen miles and that his mind was probably all over the place.

“Yeah,” she said too quickly. “You keep a pile on the table that I haven’t complained about—because I’m an _excellent_ roommate—but I thought it would suck to eat breakfast in a sweaty bandana.”

He stared at her for long moment as they limped along, his breathing gradually slowing into a more regular rhythm. “Wow,” he said quietly as he took the bandana from her, his hand shaking slightly with what she recognized as the lingering aftereffects of adrenaline. “Thank you.”

Her face flushed with heat, but she hoped he wouldn’t notice given that he was overheated himself. He was still shockingly solid and warm as he leaned on her. “No worries,” she said. “I’ll be sending you the dry-cleaning bill for all the sweat you’re getting on me.”

His eyes gleamed and he let out a tired laugh that reverberated against her side. “Dry cleaning bill? For leggings and a sweater? Someone is living under illusions of grandeur.”

He gradually eased himself off her shoulder as they approached the water tent and she watched carefully to make sure he wasn’t about to fall over. She ignored the sudden feeling of being too _cold._ He stood crouched over for a moment and then straightened with a slow exhale. He gave her a small eye crinkle before he ambled off to collect water and carb-replenishing pouches from the race volunteers.

Sakura watched him go, thinking that he was certainly right about one thing. She was living under illusions.

* * *

When they finally made it to the diner and the smell of scrambled eggs and toast washed over her, Sakura decided to order a mountain of food. Her breakfasts usually consisted of protein bars or the sugary cereal that she not-so-sneakily stole from Kakashi, and she was ready to eat _real breakfast._

They all tumbled into a big booth. Kakashi and Gai were beginning to look progressively more and more exhausted as their runner’s highs wore off while Obito shot Genma taunting looks. Gai had been upset about losing, of course, but there hadn’t been any real bitterness behind it. Sakura had been pleased to observe that Kakashi didn’t really gloat at all. They were already making plans for a triathlon six months from today.

Sakura enjoyed watching their friend group interact—they included her in the conversation, but it was also nice to just sit back and watch. It made her miss late night boba runs during college with Ino, Naruto, and Sasuke. It was good to be around people, Sakura reminded herself as she laughed with Rin at a burgeoning argument between Obito and Kakashi.

When the waitress brought out the food, Sakura watched with mild horror and awe as Kakashi and Gai began to wolf down their food with inhuman speed. Sakura almost thought Kakashi’s bandana was a secretly a hidden portal to some other dimension given the speed with which he was shoveling food behind it. He didn’t seem to even be chewing before he swallowed.

Rin caught her eye and smiled. “Be glad you weren’t here for the eating contest. It was _worse_.” Sakura shuddered and began to dig into her own pile of eggs.

As she ate, Sakura noticed that small piles of hash browns started to mysteriously appear on the side of her plate. Whenever she looked up to answer a question or laugh at a joke, she found find a new pile of them waiting for her when she looked back down. She snuck a side look at Kakashi, but he was seemingly focused on his own food and showed no signs that he was the one sneaking her extras.

She smothered a small smile. Rin asked her a question about her coursework and she gave a long and involved answer, gesticulating wildly when she remembered an awful course she had taken on physiology. She learned that Rin worked on creating prosthetics and basically begged for an invite to visit her lab.

When she finally looked back down at her plate, she found an extra piece of fresh toast, already smeared with strawberry jam. She gazed down at it, a powerful emotion suddenly emanating through her chest. Had he known strawberry was her favorite? Surely it was impossible, unless he had noticed that sad and forlorn jar of strawberry jam that sat at the back of her side of the refrigerator in the apartment.

She snuck him another look, but he was innocently sipping coffee behind his bandana, his eyes fixed on Obito as he told an old story.

Sakura smiled and took a bite of the toast. There were certainly worse reasons to wake up early.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this chapter felt lorger, clunkier, and harder to write than the others, but that was mainly bc i made it (unnecessarily) difficult for myself by writing from Sakura's perspective as someone watching a race for the first time. running is a big part of my life! before the quarantine sadness I ran half marathons, and when I'm having sad gorl quarantine hours I'll literally pull up recordings of half marathon finish lines and watch people cross one by one. adjusting to running each day in a mask was sad™ bc it was v discouraging to suddenly have to go slower, but ofc it is a small, small inconvenience in the grand scheme of everything else going on! (if i can go on runs in a mask ppl can wear them in grocery stores lol) 
> 
> rambling aside, thank u for reading! hope u all are safe and finding little pockets of joy for yourself in these wild wild times!


	7. Chapter 7

Kakashi sighed as he gazed down at the stack of essays sitting on the table in front of him. They were all written on books he had not particularly enjoyed, and the few of them he had read thus far were less than impressive. His own coursework was composed of creative workshops for this exact reason—he had never particularly enjoyed the essay as a form of writing.

In exchange for a small deduction to his MFA tuition, he had a job as a “reader” for the bigger undergrad courses. He was given stacks of essays at the beginning of each month and asked to meet with the professors to go over grading rubrics. Once a rubric had been decided, it was then his job to inch his way through all the papers and assign grades.

Kakashi scowled at the paper he was currently grading. It was becoming evidently clear that the kid who wrote it had not read the book (though could they truly be blamed for that?) and that he would have to assign the paper an undesirable score lest the professor start breathing down his neck for grading too leniently. He drew a small frowny face at the top of the page to alleviate some of the complicated feelings he was having about his role in the situation.

“I recall hearing about Sarutobi telling you off for writing your comments in green highlighter instead an actual pen.”

Kakashi looked over to where Itachi was sitting on the overstuffed couch in the department lounge. He was a history Ph.D. but it was common knowledge that the English department had the best snacks and stashes of red wine under the sink. Graduate students from other departments frequently sought shelter in the English department lounge.

“I’m not grading in green highlighter.” Kakashi waved his writing utensil for emphasis. “This is a purple highlighter.”

“Ah,” Itachi said, arching a single brow. “I apologize. How silly of me.”

Kakashi just rolled his eyes. “Don’t you ever have things to grade?”

“I do. And I grade them in pen.”

“That’s a personal decision.”

Itachi chuckled and closed the large tome he was reading as he began to pack up. It was nearing 6pm and Kakashi glanced wistfully out the window. He had told himself he could only go home when he finished grading, but what did it _really_ matter if the students got their grades back after the weekend? It wasn’t as if the grades weren’t already late. It would be a good life lesson for the students—bad things come to those who wait, and oftentimes the circumstances of having to wait are out of your control.

“How is your new roommate? Obito mentioned something about her when I went by to pick up something from their place.”

Kakashi scowled. “Did he just mention something about her, or did he enlist your help in making my life hell?”

“It was just a passing mention about her coming to your half marathon last week. I couldn’t stay long.”

Kakashi glanced up to see if Itachi was lying, but his eyes were as blank and guileless behind his glasses as they ever were. Kakashi sighed. He doubted he would even be able to tell if Itachi had been lying. 

“She’s a good roommate,” he said noncommittally as he circled a random portion of the student’s paper just to appear busy. He added a little squiggly line in the margin to avoid meeting Itachi’s gaze. “That’s it.”

Itachi sighed and shouldered his bag. “You lived with the most talkative member of my near family and his socially functional girlfriend, yet you ended up so uncommunicative.”

“Perhaps it's because Obito was so loud. I had to cope somehow.”

Itachi just shook his head. “I’ll get the full story about your new living situation from Rin on Halloween.”

Kakashi glared as Itachi walked towards the door. “I never pegged you as a gossip.”

Itachi didn’t dignify that with a response and simply slipped out the door with an unconcerned wave. Kakashi sunk further back into his chair and glared at the papers, feeling thoroughly slighted and plotted against. He drew another frowny face on the student’s paper and glanced jealously at the group of grad students congregating by the fridge with four dollar wine from Trader Joe’s. Then again, grading drunk might make it more interesting—

His phone pinged and he ignored the happy thrill he felt when he recognized the name. The idea of having some wine was growing more and more appealing by the minute.

 _Sakura (5:42pm):_ help! realized i forgot my keys

He strangled the small bit of annoyed affection that rose up in his chest and typed a response.

 _Kakashi (5:42pm):_ not surprised. things seemed a little chaotic this morning

 _Sakura (5:43pm):_ as if you’ve never woken up late

 _Kakashi (5:43pm):_ I do wake up late but I don’t yell about it

 _Kakashi (5:43pm):_ especially when there are innocent dogs around

 _Sakura (5:44pm):_ pakkun didn’t care

 _Sakura (5:44pm):_ how is this helping me get into my apartment after v long day

 _Kakashi (5:44pm):_ your apartment?

 _Sakura (5:45pm):_ our apartment

Kakashi stared at his phone for a long moment, studying the word _our_ and all the complicated feelings it threatened to induce. He took in a slow breath and drew a few squiggly lines on the poor student’s paper. It was beginning to look like less of a paper and more like an abstract piece of purple highlighter art. He drew another sad face for good measure.

 _Kakashi (5:47pm):_ fine where are you

 _Sakura (5:47pm):_ leaving the bio library

 _Kakashi (5:47pm):_ before midnight?

 _Sakura (5:47pm):_ am hongry 

He smiled.

 _Kakashi (5:48pm):_ Im in the English department lounge 

_Sakura (5:48pm):_ ill meet u where is that

Kakashi suddenly felt panicked. Did he want all the other nosy grad students to be able to speak with Sakura? He eyed them from his seat. He knew they were all interested in learning more about him, but the bio library was only two minutes away from here. Realistically, he wouldn’t be able to clean up the chaotic piles of papers soon enough to make an excuse that would keep Sakura away. He sighed.

 _Kakashi (5:49pm):_ room 226 of sarutobi hall. passcode is 123

 _Sakura (5:49pm):_ 123??? u all are idiots

 _Kakashi (5:49pm):_ no high security cadavers in here. just cheap wine.

 _Sakura (5:50pm):_ WINE???

 _Sakura (5:50pm):_ DEFINITELY ILLEGAL

 _Kakashi (5:50pm):_ and?

 _Sakura (5:51pm):_ and UNFAIR

Kakashi leaned back in his chair and tried to smother the feeling of happy anticipation. She was his roommate—they quite literally saw each other every single day— yet he still found himself looking forward to Fridays when Sakura was more likely to emerge from her work-filled haze to grumble at him and socialize. Part of his mind kept wanting to replay last week’s half marathon and the way she had stared as she helped him walk after the race, her green eyes startled, teasing, _impressed, close—_

And then he smothered the thought again, giving the wine another glance out of the corner of his eyes. He had just leaned forward to pack up the spread of papers on the table in front of him when he saw a pink head peek cautiously around the door.

He watched with amusement as Sakura’s eyes scanned the room before she found him. She grinned and then snuck a glance at the group of socializing grad students before she made her way over. She peered around herself on the way, taking in the old and overstuffed couches, the shabby bookshelves overflowing with shabbier paperbacks, the long wall of department mailboxes filled with large stacks of paper.

“This is really homey,” she said, dropping into a chair next to him at the small table.

“Mhm,” he agreed, starting to pack up. Before he could start sorting the papers, she snatched the one he had been grading and stared at it incredulously.

“Is this a student’s work?”

He glared at her. She had an obnoxious penchant for snatching things that he needed to watch out for more carefully. “Yes.”

“Then why are you coloring on it?”

“I’m not coloring on it. I’m leaving feedback.”

She shook it at him in disbelief. “What does this frowny face here mean? And this scribble on the side?”

“Frowny face means I can tell you stole this paragraph from Wikipedia. Squiggle means run-on sentence.”

She glared, but he could see the gleam of amusement in her eyes threatening to break through. “I would have killed you if I was in this class.”

“There have certainly been attempts.”

She dumped the paper back in front of him and jabbed her finger in the middle of it meaningfully. “For this student’s sake, I’m going to insist we stay here until you finish grading this paper. You’re also going to need to add some type of key or legend to your hieroglyphics so they don’t think this was graded by a kindergartener with a marker.”

Kakashi sighed. “It’s good for them. Life is full of ambiguity and they should get used to it.” He shot her a suspicious look. “And why do you care? I thought you wanted to go home?”

“I want to meet the other grad students. See what life is like on the other side.”

Kakashi scowled and shook his head. “You’ll wish you hadn’t. They’re very pretentious and cliquey.”

Sakura glanced over to where the other grad students were still mingling around the fridge. They all looked very put-together in blazers with quirky patterns and glasses with bold rims. Kakashi watched her look down at her own ensemble—a slouchy sweater and a pair of joggers that he knew she had worn to bed the previous night. Her brow knit, and Kakashi suddenly felt deeply and intensely guilty for prodding her into this self-scrutiny.

“You should go mess with them,” he said quickly. “If they try to talk about a book you haven’t read, just call it Kafkaesque. Or say it was very Postmodern. Actually, just start making up words and see how far that will get you.”

Sakura’s brow smoothed and she grinned at him. “I’m basically fluent in Latin after anatomy. I think I’ll make up a new ancient play.”

She stood up from the table to go join them. As she left, her hand brushed his shoulder, giving it a brief and unconscious squeeze for half a second before she was gone. Kakashi sat very still, wondering how and when they had gotten to the stage of casual touches. He also marveled at the fact that it had been, well, _nice_ , and that he had looked forward to it rather than smacking her hand aside.

He looked over to where the grad students were now eyeing Sakura with poorly concealed interest while she just smiled benignly. He got up and quietly sauntered over to the wall of mailboxes to bring himself just within hearing range.

“You live with him?”

The question had been asked in a tone that implied the unspoken second half of the question was: _under the bridge? with all the other trolls?_

“Yup,” Sakura said, swirling a cheap plastic cup of the Trader Joe’s wine.

“Have you seen… underneath his bandana? Do you know what his face looks like?”

Kakashi felt himself tense. He knew this was going to happen—they were going to corner Sakura and wheedle information about him out of her. Then he would have to deal with being the subject of the department gossip mill for the next few weeks. He pretended to be engrossed in getting something out of the back of his mail slot as he listened in. Very few people knew how good his hearing was, and he looked just far enough away that they would consider themselves safe. 

“No,” Sakura said, so naturally and blandly that he nearly believed her himself. “I haven’t seen underneath the bandana. Sorry.”

His hands stopped in their fake sorting of his mail. He stood very still, feeling something so powerful that it was nearly painful sweep over him.

“He wears it even at home?”

“Yup. He’s a very private person.”

“What does he usually eat? Or do?”

Sakura hummed as if she were seriously considering the question. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him eat. Or do anything really.”

Kakashi turned slowly to look at her. She was still facing the other grad students, completely unaware of his attention. Her messy ponytail was tilted to the side in mock thought, her eyes steady but glowing with a small bit of humor that he wouldn’t have recognized if he hadn’t gotten to know her so well over the last month and a half.

And then he had the slow, painful, and _thrilling_ realization that it wasn’t just him who had gotten to know Sakura.

She had gotten to know him.

He hadn’t realized just how well she had gotten to know him until he watched as she smiled blankly at a pack of strangers and lied to their faces without him even needing to ask her. He was confronted with all the things she could have told them about—their weekly cooking sessions, his dog, his favorite cereal that she stole, his habits, his running, his friends, their weekly Uber meals. He stared, remembering the brief and natural touch on his shoulder before she had left to go to a different part of the room.

All of these small pieces of his life were suddenly starting to feel massive, as if he were standing on the edge of a precipice and staring down it. Yet somehow, it wasn’t frightening at all, which he knew made it all the more dangerous.

He shuffled back over to the table and gathered all the ungraded papers into a giant wad that he shoved into his backpack. He’d deal with them later.

Sakura turned to look at him when she noticed movement by the table and grinned. She waved goodbye to the other grad students and wandered back over. “All done grading?”

“Yep.”

She narrowed her eyes. “No you’re not.”

“I’m not,” he agreed just as easily. “But I am tired of being here and I want to go home.”

She glared at him for a moment and then her eyes softened. Another frightening thing about Sakura—she was remarkably good at picking which battles she could win. She grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulders, heading to the door. He snatched his own back and followed. They trotted down the single flight of stairs in silence before stepping out into the dusky remnants of the evening. It was starting to feel more and more like fall weather—Halloween was just one week away and Rin and Obito had been going on and on about having some kind of bigger celebration.

“So why do you wear your bandana?”

He nearly choked on air as they began the walk back to the apartment. “What? Why are you asking that?”

She shrugged, her green eyes gleaming as she watched him get flustered. “I don’t know, I just realized you’re even more secretive than I thought you were. I think you could sell those people your secrets if you really wanted to— $5 per peek behind the bandana.”

He glared. “And you think I would do that?”

“I think you could be a very rich man.”

He ignored the unwilling smile that he felt spread over his lips. “Well, it’s too bad. That is going to stay a missed opportunity.”

Sakura stayed silent and raised her eyebrows meaningfully as if to say _you still haven’t given me an answer_. He pondered her question, considering how much he was willing to give away. He was beginning to form the suspicion that Sakura would unravel him entirely someday soon, and he wasn’t quite willing to submit himself to the process yet.

“Why should I have to show people my face if I don’t want to?” He finally asked, using his age-old strategy of answering questions with more questions. “What makes them entitled to it?

Sakura studied him, her eyes sharp and thoughtful. “Well, nothing does. No one is entitled to your face. But I think it would it easier for you to be understood by others if you shared it with them.”

“But what if I don’t want to be understood by others?”

She smiled. “You sound like an angsty twelve-year-old.”

“Good,” he said seriously. “That’s exactly what I’m going for. Mission successful.”

She sighed and leaned into him with her shoulder, knocking him to the side a bit. He caught a brief whiff of vanilla and coffee, and always, antiseptic. “Come on, seriously. There are easier ways to be immature than this.”

He just shrugged. “People are naturally nosy. People like those other grad students want things from me that I’m not always willing to share.”

“And I’m not nosy and bugging you for things that you’re unwilling to share?”

He turned to her. He saw a thin veil of humor in her eyes, but underneath it, her question was serious enough. Did he resent her for prying her way into his life and carving out a space for herself in it? _No_ , was the resounding answer that echoed in his mind. She had simply made things _better_. He felt his eyes soften.

“I don’t mind your version of nosiness.”

A small smile tugged at her lips. “What makes it different from theirs?”

He inhaled slowly. What indeed? He still wasn’t entirely certain himself. “To them I’m a just another piece of the world they want to solve. It frustrates them that I won’t willingly submit myself to their scrutiny.”

“And you think I don’t want to ‘solve’ you? Or that I’m not frustrated?”

He watched her carefully, his eyes tracing along the soft and warm color in her cheeks, though it could just be there because they were walking in brisk autumn air. She met his gaze for a moment before she looked away, suddenly nervous. The long fringe of her dark lashes hid her eyes as they gazed down resolutely at the ground. Something in him stirred, and he firmly reminded himself that such feelings were, as inevitable as they seemed, not for _him_. 

“I think you’re more curious than you’re interested in solving,” he finally said. “Curious for curiosity’s sake is how I would put it.”

Her eyes darted back up, cautious and probing. “So I’m curious—not nosy—and this somehow makes me different?”

He felt a wry smile pull at his lips. Very different. Painfully different. Wonderfully different. “Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”

“Does this mean you’ll stop wearing your bandana around me? I've already seen, anyways.”

“Nope.”

She glared and elbowed him while he laughed quietly. “You’re a pest,” she snapped.

“I am,” he agreed. “But now you’re stuck with me.”

She was quiet for just a moment too long before he heard her laugh softly. “I suppose I am.”

They continued on their way home, and she changed the subject to lighter topics. Yet Kakashi still couldn’t shake the thought that if this is what being _stuck_ felt like, it certainly didn’t feel very bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> smoll fillerish chapter that is less funny and more serious than the others! Also i think i mentioned it in a big block of text in a diff chapter, but if u want the somewhat cheesy and cringey playlist for this that has been feeding my brain, that lives [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4VeMETSZJQCOmqLSQPEswo)
> 
> i basically needed to get this out of the way to get started on the HALLOWEEN DEBACLE. i have lots of ideas, and it might even need to be chunked into a couple chapters. i debated not having holidays in this fic at all, but i just love Halloween so much, and i needed to write about them experiencing it. 
> 
> fun fact: this little exchange of dialogue they had at the end of the chapter has been sitting already-written in my notes since basically the day after i wrote the first chapter! idk why, but this was the confrontation i wanted them to have about his mask, even if it meant being delayed until wayyy after they first met. there are a few key moments of dialogue written in my notes app that im kind of shaping the whole fic around, and this was one of them. i wanted kakashi's perspective to shed a little light on where he is at feelings-wise (aware but in still attempting to repress it all), while still leaving some mysteries. More on why he reaLLy wears the mask and doesnt want a relationship to come!
> 
> thank u for reading and all the support! im literally only writing so quickly bc of how kind you all are, and i appreciate and love each comment!


	8. Chapter 8

Sakura sighed.

It was the day before Halloween and somehow—she truly had no idea how—her friends had convinced her to throw the party at her apartment. She had tried explaining Kakashi’s general aversion to having hordes of people in his space, but they hadn’t taken no for an answer. Naruto had pouted, Ino had screamed, and Hinata had given her such a soft and disappointed _you should do what you think is best_ that Sakura’s resistance had melted into a pathetic puddle.

She told Kakashi about the party plans last week, and he took it surprisingly well. He had just peered over the top of his favorite porn book, sighed, and said that it was fine. Rin and Obito probably had plans that would keep him out late, regardless of whether or not she threw a party. The next day he had come into her room looking decidedly pale to inform her that had Rin weaseled the truth out of him—that there would be a party at his apartment— and instead of taking him out, Rin and Obito would be bringing the party to _them_. 

He had sat down on the end of her bed while she watched from her desk, his head braced in his hands as if he were wondering what he had done to deserve his suffering. _It will be fun_ , she had assured him. _If you’re determined to be grumpy, it will be bad no matter what._ He had shot her a _look_ and told her that he didn’t _do grumpy_ before slouching out of the room in what was, ironically enough, a decidedly grumpy fashion.

Sakura dumped a couple oversized bags of chips into her cart, already mentally calculating what she would be charging her friends. She might have been coerced into throwing a party, but she would not be paying for the booze and snacks herself.

She rolled her cart dead-eyed through the aisles that were overflowing with bright and shiny Halloween paraphernalia. Decorations dripped off every shelf in neon orange, purple, and black. Everywhere around her she could hear the same cheesy skeleton hangings going off with a pre-recorded rattling. Kids giggled in the next aisle over as they kept activating a decoration that played the sound of howling wind.

Sakura normally loved Halloween—it was one of her absolute favorite holidays. This year she simply felt too tired for it. Part of her just wanted to go home and beg Kakashi to cook the weekly soup himself while she napped on the couch. He would pretend to be annoyed, but he would probably be secretly pleased that she was napping. He had been shooting her more and more worried looks of late as she waded her way through midterm season by guzzling coffee and substituting meals with gross protein bars and soylent packs.

Part of her felt unbelievably warm and soft each time he shot her the concerned look—his brow slightly furrowed, his grey eyes disapproving, and her imagination filling in a small frown underneath his bandana. Sakura had always thought it would be hell to live with someone she had a crush on. He saw her shuffle of shame to the kitchen each morning in old t-shirts covered with holes while she blinked her sleepy raccoon eyes, but there was literally no spare energy in her body to even begin to attempt to try and make herself look better.

Sakura was beginning to believe that part of the reason Kakashi wore his bandana was his ability to see so keenly through the masks of others. Anything she could have done to try and create some alternate perception of who she was would have likely been utterly transparent to him. He probably saw plenty of truth written on the faces on those around him, and he had preemptively decided to shield himself from the same exposure.

She wondered what he saw written on her face.

Sakura scowled and grabbed a fistful of candy bags from a bin, dumping them into her cart. She rolled it determinedly toward the register as she tried to drown the surge of thoughts and feelings that had leapt up as soon as she let her mind drift towards dangerous territory. Kakashi had given her no indication that he had more-than-platonic feelings toward her, aside from that single gentle and warm moment outside of Kiba’s clinic. Nothing had happened since, and he still went about his daily life in his bandana being infuriatingly thoughtful and considerate in a quiet way that drove her absolutely mad.

She made it to the check-out line and just as she was about to look at her phone to distract herself, she saw _it_ hanging on a rack next to the register. Sakura stared, knowing the rack had been put there to appeal to people who were susceptible to being tempted while they were forced to wait, but apparently that was her. Susceptible to being tempted.

She slid _it_ off the rack and stared. She had to smother a small smile at the memory that played in her mind.

_Is there a gremlin somewhere in the apartment who doesn’t know how to politely ask for some of the pasta?_

She sighed and tossed it into her cart. Fuck it, she was in deep enough. A few feet deeper couldn’t hurt.

* * *

“I’m baaaaaack.”

She kicked the door open against the wall and tried to haul the shopping bags hanging from her every limb over the threshold. She banged her elbow against the doorframe and swore at it.

Kakashi stuck his head around the corner to see what the racket was and took in the sight of her staggering under all the bags. Pakkun trotted over to peer at her as well, and Sakura began to feel like she had an unwanted audience.

He sighed and came over to peel shopping bags out of her white-knuckled grip. “Couldn’t have made multiple trips?”

“Multiple trips are for quitters.”

“And is losing circulation in your arms for winners?”

“Only the dedicated ones.”

He gave her a disapproving look and took one last bag from her before returning to the kitchen. Sakura limped along behind him with the rest of the bags and took a sniff of the warm and fragrant air wafting through the apartment.

“Wow, what smells so good in here?”

“Brownies.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling surprised as she rounded the corner and saw the neat square pan sitting on the stove. “That’s pretty nice of you. Those will be great for the party.”

He hummed noncommittally and began washing the dirty dishes in the sink while she started to put the groceries away. By the time she finished with the groceries, he was still scrubbing half-heartedly at a mixing bowl. She wandered over to the brownies and took in a deep, long breath of the warm chocolatey scent. She fished a fork out of the drawer, ready to steal a bit from the corner.

“Wait,” he said swiveling quickly. “Don’t eat those.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, suddenly suspicious. “Why not? Is there a reason I shouldn’t eat them?”

His eyes flickered with guilt for half a second before he shrugged with a feigned attempt at nonchalance. “Don’t you think we should save them for the party?”

She jabbed at fork at him accusingly. “ _No_ , there is something weird about these brownies. Otherwise you couldn’t have cared less if I had eaten one. What did you do, put weed in them or something?”

“No,” he snapped, though he shifted guilty. “I just made those specifically for my friends—”

Sakura’s eyes fastened on the small magenta bottle sitting next to the sink that he had been trying to subtly shift in front of. Growing up with Naruto as a friend had made her attuned to these kinds of subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to hide things. She sprang forward, hurling the fork to the side as she made a grab for the bottle. He lunged in front of it and latched annoyingly strong hands over her wrists while she tried to fight her way out of his grip.

“That is— _oof_ —” he grunted as he caught an elbow to the ribs. “That is _private_.”

“No way,” she snapped, trying to stomp on his feet to break free. “I need to know if you’ve finally snapped and decided to try and poison the people coming here!”

“That would be exceptionally stupid of me. Why would I try to kill them at a party I was throwing?”

Sakura yelped as he pulled her to his chest and trapped her arms against her sides so that she could no longer punch him or attempt to elbow him in the face. Her mind went foggy at the feeling of a warm chest behind her, rising and falling with deep even breaths. She was wrapped in the gentle, clean smell of detergent and something like old, dogeared paperbacks. “Glad to know you’ve put so much thought into the best way to go about _killing_ people,” she huffed, blowing a piece of hair out of her eyes and focusing very hard on not melting back into him.

“I never said— _OW!”_

Kakashi had made a huge mistake in pulling her against him. She and Ino had both gone to self-defense classes in undergrad, and they had been taught specifically how to get out trapped positions like the one he had pulled her into. She snapped her head back, hoping it wasn’t hard enough to seriously hurt him, and then shoved him to the side to snatch up the bottle as he tumbled to the ground.

He glared up at her from the floor, rubbing his chin as she stared down feverishly at the small print. Her head snapped up. “ _MiraLAX?_ You’re giving them _laxatives?”_

He scowled and hauled himself to his feet. “I’m not _giving_ them anything. There will be brownies sitting on the table—”

“And what about my friends, huh? What was going to happen to them?”

Kakashi cringed. “I was going to avert that. The intended targets are Obito and Genma.”

She waved the bottle at him, beginning to feel herself go into a frenzy. “Do you know how absurdly _dangerous_ it is to give people something like this without them knowing? Did you know diarrhea can kill someone if they aren’t able to replenish their bodily fluids?”

Kakakshi stared at her blankly. “I didn’t put that much in there. I think it will be fine.”

“And what if they were allergic to something in this that you didn’t know about?”

“I know what they’re allergic to.”

“Oh yeah,” she seethed. “What are they allergic to?”

“Obito is allergic to pistachios, and Genma is allergic to being quiet.”

She ignored the impulse to laugh and gave him a look that could peel paint. “You are _not_ giving these to people.”

Kakashi let out a long sigh and leaned against the counter. “Okay, _fine_ , I won’t give them to people, but can I at least give one to Genma? He did dump a lot of coffee on me a couple weeks ago, and I can show you how much powder I put in the brownies as proof that it isn’t a lethal dose. I’ve watched him eat far more questionable things in the past.”

Sakura glowered at him. “I am going to be a healthcare professional—”

“Once you have triple checked that they won’t kill him, and I seriously doubt they will since I only put in a tiny amount and that medicine is safe enough to be used by the elderly, I’ll let you order a freebee celebratory UberEats meal. Right now.”

Sakura tightened her grip on the MiraLAX bottle. She had just been confronted with a decision—her morals, or free restaurant food that would be cooked and delivered to her doorstep. Kakashi’s face was devoid of any emotion, which she couldn’t help but think was very smart of him. If he had shown even a hint of gloating, she would have hurled the bottle at him and told him to go to hell. Well, it wasn’t as if Genma didn’t deserve it.

“Fine,” she snapped. “But only because I am hungry, tired, and sad, and because basically no one dies from diarrhea here, though it is a major problem globally.”

He nodded sagely. “You’re right,” he agreed, though it wasn’t clear what he was referring to. It seemed like he was just agreeing to placate her, and while that should have made her angry, she just didn’t have it in herself at the moment. Besides, she _was_ right.

She clicked the bottle back on the counter and stomped over to the couch where she promptly threw herself face down.

“Do you want the spicy noodles again?”

Sakura was very glad her face was buried in the warm darkness of the couch cushion, because him remembering her usual order probably would have sent a whole slew of emotions spiraling across her face.

“Yes please,” she grumbled.

She heard him go back to cleaning dishes with a weary sigh. “You know, my chin is still a little sore. I knew I shouldn’t worry about you walking home late from the library. I should have been more concerned about the muggers and the state of their jaws once you were finished with them.”

Sakura turned her head sideways to peek over at his back. “You worry about me when I walk home late?”

He his hands hesitated briefly as they set the mixing bowl on the drying rack. “Yeah. The rent would be expensive without you.”

Sakura smothered a small smile. “Hmm. Glad to know I would be missed.”

“So why are you tired, hungry, and sad? The first two make sense, but why the last?”

He dried his hands on a dishcloth before tossing it back on the counter and turning around to look at her. He studied her carefully and Sakura puffed a piece of hair off her cheek.

“I don’t know, it’s just more fun to celebrate holidays when you don’t want to pass out and sleep for fifteen hours. I miss watching Halloween movies.”

He hummed in agreement and made his way over to the table to lower himself into a chair. He propped his chin up on the palm of his hand as he watched her. “Then why don’t you sleep before the party tomorrow so that you can enjoy it? And watch a movie or two?”

“I have too much to do.”

“You didn’t have too much to do when Pakkun needed eye ointment.”

Sakura scowled. “That was a medical emergency.”

He gestured at her prone form, still sprawled inelegantly on the couch. “And this isn’t?”

“I’ll know when I finally enter a state of medical emergency.”

“Oh yeah? When will that be? After your organs start to fail?”

Sakura glared at him. She knew he was teasing her, but he also wasn’t exactly wrong. “I have too much work to get done before the party, but I’ll sleep the day after. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep through my hangover.”

“Wise decision. And just so I know, how long should I let you sleep before I call someone to tell them you’re in a coma?”

She felt a small smile tugging at her lips. It was infuriating how easily he could nudge her back out of a bad mood. “Just show me how much poison you put in your friend’s food so I know that I won’t have to turn you in for semi-intentional manslaughter.”

He got back up and retrieved the small bottle from the counter along with a small spoon. He crouched beside the couch so she could see without having to move from her slumped position and measured out a tiny half spoon of powder.

She raised her eyebrows. “That’s it? If all he ate was one brownie, he’d probably just end up a little gassy. He’d have to eat the whole pan for the laxatives to even work.”

Kakashi nodded seriously. “Gassy is the goal. It will be an untraceable crime.”

Sakura grinned. She gazed at him and studied his appearance as he dumped the powder back in the bottle. His silver hair was rumpled, and his grey eyes were intent on making sure none of the powder slipped onto the floor. She was reminded of the quiet focus she had observed in him the first time they had cooked together, and the way she had noted the solid neatness of his hands and their movements. Everything about him was steady and subtle when he was calm like this— even the quiet pull he that exuded was gentle as it continued to make her feel like she was being tugged into his field of gravity.

His eyes flicked up to meet hers and she was caught staring. She blinked, sleepy and surprised as he stared back at her for a long moment before straightening and walking away from the couch. She had a half-baked and terror-filled thought that maybe—just maybe— Kakashi could read minds. She was just reminding herself that was impossible (it had to be impossible) when he spoke.

“Food will be here in ten. Do you want to break out the awful pseudo-TV that Naruto brought and put on a Halloween movie while we eat?”

She stared at his back and considered teasing him for the _we_ , but she knew that she would be miserable if he balked at the teasing and scuttled back underneath his shell. He was sneakily but also transparently trying to convince her to do something other than work, and the sheer amount of emotion rising up in her throat was absolutely _terrifying_.

“Yes,” she said. “I would really, really like that.”

She refused to feel guilty for losing work time when they ended up finishing the whole movie after she had only planned on watching part of it. After all, when she finally sat back down at her desk, she felt like she had been jolted with a fresh and happy wave of energy that made her far more efficient than she would have been if she had started working while grumpy and fatigued.

She didn’t let herself think too seriously about the obvious reason why.

* * *

Sakura was nearly finished with her work for the night when she heard Kakashi moving around in his room. She squinted at the digital clock on the microwave and mentally berated herself for not sleeping earlier. It was nearly 5am.

Sometimes Kakashi would randomly wake up in the night and wander out looking very rumpled to make a bowl of cereal and retreat back to his room. He seemed to be an inconsistent sleeper, and sometimes he would give her a snarky comment or two for staying up too late before he went back to bed.

Sakura’s eyes fell on the pile of party chips and candy that she had set in the corner for tomorrow night’s party—or _today’s_ party given that it had already been Halloween for the last five hours. She saw her impulse purchase from the rack next to the register peeking out of the bottom of the stack. Suddenly she had an idea.

She could wait for Kakashi to come out and snark at her for being up too late and watch him prank Genma during the party, _or_ she could join in on the mayhem. Sakura was feeling particularly inclined toward chaos, but it might have just been the lack of sleep.

In any case, she leapt up from the table and darted over to the Halloween pile to retrieve her mask. She was never one to be left out unless she could help it. If Kakashi thought she was a gremlin, she would _show him_ a gremlin. She crouched by the refrigerator to wait for him to come around the corner.

His door clicked open and she heard his sleepy shuffling gait nearing the corner. She held her breath and prepared to leap out. 

“Boo!”

_“FUCK!”_

Sakura had half a second to process the fact that a projectile had been hurled at her face before her adrenaline kicked in and she dropped to the ground. She felt whatever it was whistle over her head and then there was an ear shattering smash somewhere behind her as she screamed.

“Ahhh, _stop, stop don’t kill me!”_

She peeked up through scrunched eyes to find Kakashi glaring down at her, looking very ruffled and pale over the top of his bandana. She sheepishly peeled the garish green gremlin mask off her face and smiled weakly as she straightened up out of her crouched semi-fetal position.

“Looks like I got y—”

“What the actual _hell_ are you doing,” he snapped.

“I thought we were playing pranks!”

His eyes flashed and Sakura imagined that his nostrils had probably flared under his messily tied bandana. “It’s 5 fucking am!”

Sakura raised her eyebrows. She had never heard Kakashi angry enough to swear, but she knew he wasn’t really _angry_. It was more like he was channeling the energy of a ruffled cat whose tail had been stepped on.

“So you get to play pranks but I can’t?”

He gestured wildly as if words were beyond him and then settled back into a more familiar version of resigned and fatigued grumpiness. He scowled at her. “That was not a prank. That was guerilla warfare.”

“Wait,” Sakura said, remembering the loud shattering sound that had come from behind her. “What did you break?”

She turned to look behind herself and gaped. The dark glass of their microwave door had been shattered across the floor. It was scattered all over the surrounding countertop and stove. She spun back around and jabbed a finger at him.

“Well now we don’t have a microwave, and 90% of my diet is composed of frozen things that have been microwaved! What am I going to do now? Starve?”

He glared. “And whose fault is it that the microwave is broken, Sméagol?”

Sakura absolutely refused to laugh as she jabbed her finger at him again in accusation. “Your fault! This is _your_ fault.”

She looked back over at the pile of glass and nudged it with her slippered toe in search of the projectile that had shattered the microwave. When she found it, she reached down and dusted the shards of glass off in disbelief. She snatched it up and swung back around to shake it at him.

“This is just a paperback porn book!”

He crossed his arms in irritation. “Your point?”

“How did it break the glass of an _APPLIANCE_?”

He eyed the glass on the floor and then her head. He tilted his head to the side in thought, as if performing a mental calculation. “Good thing you ducked,” He decided.

“Kakashi! I’m beginning to think _you’re_ the gremlin!”

He glared, a little bit of the disgruntled anger sparking in his eyes again. “Well why did you think hiding in the dark to scare the shit out of me was a good idea?”

“Because I didn’t know you could turn paperback books into ninja throwing stars—“

“Well neither did I, but I haven’t exactly had a reason to test that particular skill before.”

Sakura knew she should be freaking out about the newly broken appliance in their kitchen, but only one thought was emerging in her mind as she stared at Kakashi.

“Wait,” she said, feeling a devious smile play at the edges of her lips as his eyes grew suspicious. “I think this means I win. I pranked you and I _won._ ”

He stilled. “Absolutely not.”

“I scared you! Completely! You just admitted it!”

He snorted. “You nearly lost your head, and you _did_ lose your main food source, so let’s not try it again and call it even.”

“Are you going to try and sneak me laxatives now?”

“No,” he said curtly as he pulled the broom and the dustpan out from behind the fridge. “We share the same bathroom. Otherwise I would be seriously considering it.”

Sakura giggled somewhat hysterically at the gross joke. God, it was nearly 5am and she hadn’t slept. The same thought seemed to occur to Kakashi as he watched her giggle like a maniac.

“I have a feeling that I already know the answer to this, but have you slept?”

She covered her mouth trying to smother the laughter. “Nope.”

He sighed. “You’re really going to owe me for this, but I’ll clean up the glass and burn that awful mask. Go to bed and get some sleep so you aren’t acting like this at the party.”

“Like what?”

He deadpanned. “Like a gremlin.”

She simply couldn’t take it. She keeled over howling with laughter and he watched with a mixture of affection and irritation. He poked her with the end of the broom to herd her to her bedroom and let out a few chuckles himself when she laughed so hard that she snorted.

“Go to bed, Sakura,” he said as she peered out at him behind her door. “Before you get one of us killed.”

She grinned, taking in his rumpled and sleepy appearance and feeling a massive wave of affection wash over her. She had never had such fun after a miserable night of studying. She knew that she should be flipping out about the broken appliance and what they were going to do about it, but she was simply enjoying herself too much to care. She wondered if a bit of Kakashi’s unflappable and easy acceptance of the chaos around him was rubbing off on her.

“Goodnight, Kakashi. I’ll rest well knowing that you’ll throw your porn at any intruders and behead them.”

“That reminds me,” he said, sticking his hand out. “I want my book back.”

She realized she was still holding the paperback of doom. She tucked it protectively behind her back and glared. “This thing nearly took my life. I think I’m entitled to hold on for it a little while longer.”

He raised an eyebrow. “ _You,_ the person who just stayed up until 5am working, are going to read for fun?”

She stuck her nose up in the air haughtily. “Maybe I will.”

He stared at her for a moment and sighed. “You’re impossible to reason with in this state. Go to sleep, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She blinked. “Wait, you’re going to let me keep it? Just like that? I’ve never seen you without this thing—you took it with you to make your 5am cereal.”

He shot her a look over his shoulder, a faint teasing light in his eyes. “Cute that you think it’s my only copy.”

Sakura felt herself flush. She knew he hadn’t meant _cute_ but, well, it was 5am and she was a complete wreck. “Goodnight, Kakashi,” she managed, forcing her voice into a lower octave so that it wouldn’t come out as a squeak. She clicked the door shut behind herself and leaned against it with a sigh.

She had been wrong when she bought the mask at the supermarket. She was in it far, far too deep already, and it seemed that she kept finding ways to tumble in even deeper.

She opened the book and skimmed through a few random paragraphs. Well, at least she was having fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chaoooossssssssss
> 
> pls don't put laxatives in ur friends' food even as a joke lol. kakashi is an imperfect pest. 
> 
> the halloween nonsense was too big to dump into a single chapter, and this felt like a natural splitting point!!! hope you enjoyed the silliness and THANK YOU as always for the lovely things you write in the comments. they continue to make my life better and better <3


	9. Chapter 9

Sakura woke up to bright afternoon light peeking through the cracks of her blinds. She squinted and buried her head back in the darkness of her pillow to ward off her encroaching headache. Pieces of the previous evening began to filter back to her—cross validating Tsunade’s data, stealing some chips from the pile for the party, pranking Kakashi and shattering the microwave—

She jolted straight up.

Almost unwillingly, her eyes slid to the small orange book sitting on her bedside table. So it had happened. She smothered a groan as she hauled herself out of bed and shuffled out into the kitchen.

Kakashi was sitting at the table with another book. Upon her entrance, his eyes flicked up to meet hers. She gave him a sheepish look and then turned to stare at the jagged, gaping hole in what had previously been a working appliance. Kakashi stood up from the table and came over to join her in looking at the microwave. Sakura couldn't help but feel as though they were joined together in some perverse memorial service.

“Well, this won’t look good at the party,” Sakura observed.

Kakashi slid her a look out of the corner of his eyes. “You’re not wrong.”

“Do you think it would still… work?”

He snorted. “Without starting a fire? Or dousing us in radiation?”

“The radiation wouldn’t be harmful, right? It’s just a microwave.”

“I don’t know, I’m not a mechanic.” They stared at it together for another moment. “We could cover it with a trash bag,” Kakashi suggested. “Like people do when their car windows have been smashed.”

“Yeah, because a broken microwave covered with a trash bag just screams _we’re functional adults_.”

“Well, I’m a functional adult. You’re a green monster who lurks in kitchens at 5am.”

Sakura’s head snapped to the side and she jabbed him with her finger. “Hey, let’s not forget who actually did the breaking. If someone asked _who broke the microwave_ , that question would have an answer, and it wouldn’t be me.”

Kakashi gave her a long, unimpressed look. “Yes. Clearly you’re blameless.”

Sakura just sighed and dumped far too many coffee grounds into her French press. “Is it too early to put alcohol in my coffee?”

“It’s 4pm on Halloween. I’ll go with no.”

Sakura nearly dropped the mug she had grabbed, and Kakashi gave her a look that said _break one more thing, and I will actually get mad_. “It’s 4pm,” she squeaked.

He sat back down, already half-absorbed into his book. “I decided, for my own well-being and sanity, that you should get more rest than you have been getting lately.”

Sakura glared. “You turned off my alarm?”

“Yes, I did,” he said simply. “After the sixth time it went off and you did nothing, I went in your room and turned it off because it was _bugging me_. And Pakkun.”

“That is a massive violation of privacy!”

He shrugged, his eyes still fixed on the page in front of him. “I don’t understand what the difference is between you sleeping in silence and you sleeping through a loud alarm, other than one of those options being quieter.” 

Sakura ignored him and snatched the bottle of Bailey’s they kept on the top of the fridge. She unscrewed it and tipped a couple loud glugs into her coffee. “You’re annoying,” she said.

“No, I’m Kakashi,” he said absently.

Sakura tried to press away a smile but the corny dad joke forced up a corner of her lips. “So who is coming tonight from your friend group?”

“Obito and Rin. Maybe Obito’s cousin and his partner if they don’t end up going to a different thing with his younger brother. Probably Gai.” Kakashi thought for a long moment. “Maybe Asuma and Kurenai— you haven’t met them yet. Genma is going to come early to take a look at the microwave.”

“Why,” Sakura asked, leaning against the counter and taking a fortifying sip of her coffee. “To bully us?”

“No, he’s a mechanic. He specializes in fixing weird things. I’d rather see if he could fix it than watch you slowly starve.”

Sakura eyed the jagged edges of the glass. “Well, that is very considerate of you.”

Kakashi stood up from the table, stretching languidly and yawning. Sakura tried very hard not to appreciate how long his arms were as he extended them over his head. Once he had finished stretching, he immediately reverted back into his slouched posture. “I’m going to go finish some work before people start arriving in hordes,” he said. “Who knows when it will be quiet in here again.”

Sakura rolled her eyes. “You’re not fooling anyone. I know you’re just going to take a nap.”

“Mmph,” was his only response as he walked back to his room, nudging her with his shoulder on the way.

Sakura watched him go and ignored the small smile she felt blooming on her face. Then she sighed, tipped a little bit more Bailey’s into her coffee, and retreated to her room. Operation Learn How to Control Feelings was failing spectacularly.

* * *

Her head jolted up from her notes a few hours later when she heard light knocking at her door.

“Sure, now you knock,” she snapped.

“Can I come in?”

She sighed. “I suppose.”

He opened the door and poked his head around it. “Do you have tape?”

“Why do you need the tape?”

“That’s personal.”

She raised an eyebrow and dug a roll of duct tape out of the messy pile in her desk drawer. “It better not be for a prank,” she warned as he came over to pluck it from her hands.

“I think if we continued pranking each other, one of us would be dead within the week.”

“Fair enough.”

He shuffled back out through the door and closed it behind him. Sakura went back to her notes. Five minutes later she heard another knock. She leaned back in her chair and fought the urge to smile.

“Yeeesss?”

He let himself in and Sakura blinked. He had a blue box taped to the front of his chest, a butter knife in his hands, and a look in his eyes that Sakura would have called mildly smug.

“I’m a serial killer.”

She just stared at him, unimpressed. “You couldn’t have told me that during the roommate interview?”

“No, cereal with a C. I’m a cereal killer.” He thumped what she now recognized as a hollow box of Frosted Flakes that had been messily taped to his chest.”

She snorted. “And why are you a— _oh shit_.”

“I’m not sure how to answer that.”

“I forgot to get a Halloween costume! All the rushing around this week and work! Ino is going to _kill_ me! We always used to get all dressed up together, and I promised her I would be able to do it on my own this time!”

Kakashi looked down at the cereal box taped to his chest. “Do you want mine?”

Sakura felt her little grinch heart grow impossibly large at his innocent and absolutely clueless gesture. The fact that he was willing to untape the box from his own chest and fork it over to her was somehow deeply moving. She tumbled a few feet further into the Big Feelings pit before she caught herself. “That is very, very sweet of you, Kakashi, but I think it is more of a _you_ costume than a _me_ costume.”

He nodded, a small gleam of humor in his eyes. “I get it. Not all of us can pull off the cereal killer look.”

There was a knock at the front door and Sakura was distracted from her terror at the idea of Ino’s wrath. She followed Kakashi into the hallway and he opened the door to reveal a smirking Genma.

“So,” Genma said, walking in and twirling his toothpick in his teeth as if he owned the apartment. “What did you break?”

Kakashi sighed and wordlessly led Genma to the kitchen. He gestured to the shattered microwave and Genma let out a low whistle. He stared at it for a moment before turning to Kakashi.

“So how did you break it?” Genma asked innocently. “Taking a leaf out of Obito and Rin’s book and fucking on the—“

“No,” Kakashi snapped as Sakura felt heat flood her face. “It was an accident.”

Genma eyed the violent and jagged hole. “Right. So who accidentally lost their temper? Was it Pinky? I don’t know why, but I have a feeling it was Pinky.”

Sakura glared. “If it were me, do you think it would be smart to crack jokes with a nickname I don’t like?”

Genma just twirled his toothpick and gave her a toothy grin. “I think I deserve to be cut a little slack as the guy fixing your microwave.”

“So you can fix it,” Kakashi interrupted before Sakura started a verbal tirade.

“Oh yeah, I’ll just need to order you a new door.”

“You can’t just stick some new glass in there,” Sakura grouched.

“Nope. That wasn’t glass. It was electrically conductive shielding.” Sakura started blankly and Genma’s grin grew a little wider. “I’m telling you that you didn’t break glass. You broke very thin steel. Glass doesn’t reflect microwaves. There are holes in the steel though, just big enough to let a little visible spectrum light through so you can see—”

Sakura whirled on Kakashi. “You threw something hard enough at me to _break steel!”_

Kakashi scowled. “Right. Because when I was on my way to make myself cereal, I was planning on committing murder by book. It’s not my fault you like to live life teetering on the edge of a precipice—”

_“I do not teeter on precipices—”_

“Okay, okay,” Genma interrupted. “I can see I’ve stumbled into the middle of a domestic quarrel. “Let’s all just remember that we love each other, or that we at least need to be able to cohabit with one another.”

Sakura shot Kakashi one last glare that he pointedly ignored. She turned back to Genma with a sigh. “Is it definitely and absolutely unusable in the meantime? I know it sounds stupid, but there is a serious risk of me starving without it. Can’t we just slap some duct tape—”

“Uh, yeah, definitely don’t use it until it has a new door. Without the shielding the microwaves won’t be properly contained. They’re non-ionizing but you could still burn yourself.”

Sakura eyed him with amusement. “Genma… Are you secretly a nerd?”

He blanched and Kakashi chuckled. “No,” Genma snapped, chomping on his toothpick discontentedly and shooting Kakashi a warning look.

“He is,” Kakashi affirmed. “He got his fancy engineering degree during undergrad with the rest of us and worked in an _office_ for a whole year before he quit to be a scoundrel fulltime.”

Genma snatched a dish towel off the stove and smacked Kakashi with it. “Stop sharing my dark past.” He sighed melodramatically and turned back to Sakura. “But yes, unfortunately it is true. I spent a miserable year being _managed_ before I realized that I like fixing things more than I like designing things. I like to get my hands dirty, if you know what I mean, Pinky.”

Sakura rolled her eyes. “I’m sure Ino just loves your dirty hands. And your giant lewd ego.”

Genma snickered. “Good one. You’re going to give your pervy roommate a run for his money.”

Kakashi just glared, but Genma had given her an idea. She was talking before she could stop herself and consider the consequences of what she was about to ask for. “Kakashi,” she said, her head snapping to him so quickly that he took an instinctive step back. “I need your dick shirt.” 

Sakura tried to shove down her conflicting feelings of satisfaction and mortification as Genma guffawed and Kakashi’s cheeks turned a faint red against his bandana. It was rare that she was ever able to fluster Kakashi, and she forced herself to enjoy it instead of panicking.

“What? Why?” He managed. “It’s dirty, I wore it to sleep last night—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sakura said, deciding she was going to have to fully commit to her scheme or risk imploding. “It’s either this, or Ino finally snaps my neck.”

“I don’t know why you think I’d be willing to lend—”

“Please?” Sakura fixed him with the best pout she had learned from Naruto.

Kakashi’s glare wavered for a moment. With a large sigh, he sauntered off toward his room and waved his hand in resigned exasperation. “You absolutely do not deserve it after last night, but _fine_. I know I’ll regret it later, but _fine_.”

Sakura grinned and snagged one of Kakashi’s bandanas from the pile on the table. When she turned back to Genma, he was watching her with wide eyes. She felt a flicker of panic. “Wait, what is—”

“Nothing, nothing,” he said, seeming snap out of whatever state he had been in. He grinned. “Good job, Pinky.”

“Good job on what,” she asked suspiciously.

Genma just shrugged and leaned back on the counter. “Nothing—just, good job.”

Sakura eyed him and was just opening her mouth to prod for more information when her face was smacked with cloth. She yanked the shirt off her head to find Kakashi scowling at her from the hallway where he had thrown it at her. “I don’t even want to know what you’re going to do with it,” he said, “but I want it returned in this condition.”

She pointed her nose in the air and stomped past him to her room. “You know, it isn’t good to be so attached to your belongings,” she snarked, clicking the door shut before he could say anything else.

Sakura heard Kakashi start a muffled argument with Genma on the other side of the door and couldn’t help the small smile that slid over her face. She yanked her bulky sweatshirt over her head and tossed it into the ever-growing and probably-still-clean pile of clothes on her chair. She slid Kakashi’s shirt over her head, shrugged her arms into it, and then immediately stilled.

It was common sense that the shirt would smell like Kakashi. It was, after all, _his_ shirt that he had just told her he had worn the previous night, yet she still hadn’t been prepared for the feelings that reared their heads when the scent of the shirt washed over her. She tentatively lifted a hand to the too-large collar that was pooled around her neck and held the fabric up to her nose.

It smelled like soft detergent, like the woody scent that his aftershave left lingering in the bathroom, like salt and sweat, like the odd and dusty smell she associated with breathing in the pages of an old book, like—

Like him.

She lowered herself down into her desk chair, wondering why she suddenly felt the urge to cry even though she didn’t feel very sad at all. She sat for a moment in the stillness, listening to the muffled sound of voices talking in the other room. She took in another long breath of the shirt to anchor herself.

She realized that somehow, over the last two months, Kakashi had managed to start smelling like home.

She pressed her lips together tightly and smothered the lingering bits of emotion swirling around her chest. Now was not the time for these kinds of life-altering realizations (and _seriously_ , how many more of them was she going to have), nor was she mentally equipped to process them a mere half hour before her apartment ( _their apartment_ ) would be flooded with her perceptive friends.

She unfolded the bandana from her clammy palm and went to the mirror where she tied it over the lower half of her face. She stared back at herself, nothing more than a pair of green eyes—angry, fragile, _happy_ all at once. _Everything is fine_ , she told herself firmly. _You’re going to be just fine_.

She took a few moments to steady herself before she left her room. She was absolutely determined to have fun on one of her favorite holidays of the year— today was not a day to mope or panic. She struck a dramatically slouched pose in the hallway as Kakashi and Genma turned to look at her.

“Yo,” she said in her best imitation of Kakashi’s voice. “Am I scary or what?”

Kakashi’s eyes widened almost comically at the sight of her in his shirt and his bandana. Sakura heard Genma laughing, but her eyes remained fixed on Kakashi as his gaze traveled over her slowly.

She watched his face shift into an expression she had never seen on him before—it was something a little gentler than his usual sharp intensity when he was serious. He watched her with a look that was almost fragile, tracing over the lines of the bandana before he met her gaze. Then the emotion swirling in his eyes became something utterly magnetic, something that was sucking in her in towards him with a paralyzing inevitability—

“Oh my god,” Genma snorted so loudly and suddenly that it snapped Sakura out of the trance she had descended into. Kakashi jolted and stiffened, his walls back up and firmly in place when he looked at her again. “I am _never_ going to get over this,” Genma gasped as he clutched his ribs.

Sakura forced herself to smile, and then realized that she didn’t need to because no one would see it either way. She began to see the appeal of being Kakashi.

“Oh really,” she drawled, still slouching and talking in her lower fake-Kakashi voice. She reached in her back pocket and pulled out a beaten-up orange paperback with a large caution sign on it. She fanned herself with it as Genma sank to the ground howling with laughter. Kakashi glared.

“I do not talk like that,” he snapped.

“I do not talk like that,” Sakura parroted, imitating his slouched, crossed arms posture.

Kakashi glowered but seemed to realize that protesting would just give her more ammunition to tease him. She walked over and leaned on the counter beside them, still fanning herself with the paperback.

“God I can’t,” Genma managed as he straightened. “This is too good.”

Sakura eyed him and his decidedly normal ensemble. “I’d be pretty worried for yourself right now. Your girlfriend, your fuckbuddy, your seductress—whatever you two are—is _big_ into Halloween. If Ino rolls in here and sees you in jeans, you will be going home alone tonight, pal.”

Genma paled. “Really?”

“Oh yeah,” Sakura said, nodding seriously.

Kakashi seemed to sense it was his time to strike in this sudden moment of vulnerability. Sakura watched as he slyly nudged the pre-sliced tray of brownies that had been sitting on the stove towards Genma, as though he were offering the food in condolence for the difficult predicament.

“Thanks,“ Genma muttered, his brow furrowed in thought as he reached toward the tray. Then he froze and his eyes flashed to Kakashi. “That was nice of you.”

Kakashi’s face remained utterly blank. “I’m a nice friend.”

Genma snorted, and then his eyes fixed on Sakura. She desperately tried to clear all emotion from her face. She was realizing that it was harder to be Kakashi than she thought it would be. Even just allowing people to see half of her face was beginning to feel like too much. “Sakura,” Genma said, his voice thick with suspicion. “Take a bite of the brownies first.”

“Um,” she said, glancing at Kakashi whose eyes filled with quiet fury as she hesitated. “You know, I don’t really feel hungr—“

“Aha!” Genma cried, shoving the tray away from himself. “Nice try.”

Kakashi rounded on Sakura. “You couldn’t have eaten just one bite?”

She folded her arms and glared. “Uh, sorry. I don’t want to fart my way through my own Halloween party just because you have an unresolved personal vendetta.”

“Sakura, I’ll fix the microwave for free if you get me a Halloween costume that Ino will like.”

She turned back to Genma and raised an eyebrow. “Desperate, are we?”

“Yes,” Genma said flatly.

“C’mon, loverboy,” she said as she led him towards the bathroom. “I have just the idea for you.”

* * *

Kakashi couldn’t help but feel like Sakura had hit the nail on the head by marshaling Genma into the bathroom, dousing him with hair product, and turning him into Danny from Grease. Genma had pouted and griped until Kakashi forked over a black t-shirt for him to wear. Kakashi was beginning to feel like a mix between a clothing store and a Halloween costume store. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

Rin and Obito had already arrived and given him plenty of hell over Sakura’s “costume.” Kurenai and Asuma had been a little more subtle and gracious with their teasing. A couple of Sakura’s friends—a girl with two buns whose costume was unclear, though she carried two very long swords that seemed real enough, and a boy with long hair. They were catching up with her over by the door.

Kakashi swirled his beer and tried, for what felt like the millionth time, not to stare at Sakura.

He wasn’t sure why he had been so blindsided. What had he expected her to do with the shirt other than wear it? He had still been utterly unprepared for the way it draped over her while he realized something that was _his_ had become _hers._ The realization had given him a sharp, nearly bittersweet feeling in his chest as her green eyes had sparked with mischief above the stolen bandana. When she had slipped the book out of her back pocket and fanned herself with it, he realized just how deep of a hole he had dug himself into.

He was a carefully private person, but Sakura had emerged from her room covered in pieces of his life that he had willingly given to her. Even just two months ago, the idea would have been unthinkable.

The feeling that had washed over him when he saw her was unthinkable.

He watched her now— her face covered in slanted and warm lighting, smiling and laughing with her friends, wisps of hair sticking up at odd angles and an amber bottle in her hands. She threw her head back and laughed. His eyes traced down the line of her throat, her collarbones peeking out from underneath _his_ too-large shirt.

“Nice isn’t it?” He jolted and realized Genma had come over to lean on the counter with him. Kakashi frowned and tried to take an unconcerned sip of his drink.

“What do you want, Genma? Haven’t you caused me enough misery today?”

Genma just nodded his head towards Sakura. “Seriously, it’s nice when you have someone to share things with. Makes you feel like a human, doesn’t it?”

“What makes you think I’m sharing? I would argue things were stolen rather than shared.”

Genma just grinned. “She’s waving your precious little book around and her head is still attached to her body. I remember once Obito and Rin went on a campaign to try and steal it from you—”

“Bad idea,” Kakashi said without thinking, and then cursed himself.

Genma just smirked and shrugged. “Maybe you should think a little harder about why her having it isn’t as _bad_ of an idea.”

The only response that felt safe was to just take another swig of his drink. Kakashi was already starting to feel a little bit of a warm buzz, and he was just deciding to chase that feeling when the front door swung open again. Loud screaming ensued.

Genma perked up and craned his neck to see over the heads of other people. The woman that Kakashi recognized as Ino was hauling Sakura into the kitchen lighting to get a good look at her. She had her hair in two high blonde pigtails and was twirling a bat expertly in one hand. 

“No fishnets,” she asked Sakura with incredulity. “This is our first Halloween in years that you have not worn fishnets with me—”

“Kakashi doesn’t do fishnets,” Sakura snapped, eyeing the bat that seemed to twirl faster and faster in Ino’s fingers. “I’m in-character.”

“You couldn’t have done a sexy Kakashi variant? Like a sexy nurse or something? We could have worked with the bandana!”

Kakashi watched with interest as Sakura flushed beet red. “No,” she sputtered.

Kakashi heard the click of a glass being put down beside him and looked over to see Genma setting his drink down on the counter. Genma’s eyes traveled up and down Ino and lingered on the aforementioned fishnets. He let out a long, slow rush of air under his breath. “God,” he mumbled to himself. “I’m _such_ a lucky bastard.”

He clapped Kakashi on the shoulder and spared him one last smirk as he left. “Just think about what I’ve said, Kakashi. I’ve found myself that being a little more… _attached_ isn’t bad at all.”

Kakashi refused to allow the advice to send him into a spiral, which it no doubtedly would have if he allowed himself to think about it too hard. It was a sad day indeed that _Genma_ was telling him to settle down. “I hope she hits you with the bat,” he said instead.

Genma grinned. “Me too.”

* * *

Kakashi might have been a little over enthusiastic in ignoring Genma’s advice. He had taken a couple shots with Rin and Obito, played a game of rage cage at their mess of a kitchen table, and had finally retreated back to the kitchen counter. They were only thirty or so minutes into the party, but he was already feeling the warm and comfortable haze of a tipsy buzz. He made a mental note to cut himself off, even as he took another sip of his beer.

He braced his arms on the counter and leaned back to watch people mingle with one another. Gai had arrived five minutes ago bearing an absurdly thoughtful quantity of home baked desserts, though he had also brought a granola mix that looked absolutely disgusting. Kakashi made a mental note to steal some given that it was probably optimized to enhance running performance.

Suddenly there was a warm weight tucked against his side, leaning lightly against him. He identified the familiar mingling of scents— _coffee, vanilla, jasmine, antibac—_ and froze. He looked down into gleaming green eyes that were close enough to send his mind into a swirling panic, but far enough away that it wouldn’t be scandalous to their friends. If he lifted one of the arms braced on the counter behind him, it would be wrapped around her. He realized they were standing together on the edge of _something_ , and he forced himself to take slow, even breaths.

“Nice party, huh?” She giggled a little tipsily, but there was still a lucid sharpness to her eyes. She was probably in the same stage of almost-drunkness as him—not far along enough to be stupid, but just tipsy enough to be a little braver.

Maybe that was why he just smiled down at her, feeling his bandana shift over his lips. His eyes were drawn to her own mirrored and cloaked smile that was hidden by the bandana she was wearing. It was new to not be able to see her lips in all their usual quirked expressions, but it was simply another reason to focus on how _green_ her gaze was. Like something fresh and clean. Like something brand new.

“I suppose,” he finally said. “As far as parties go, this isn’t a bad one.”

She chuckled, and he felt the lightest reverberations of it against his side. He was wondering if he was brave enough to shift a little closer when she spoke again.

“I wasn’t even going to talk to you.”

He turned to her. “Hm?”

She watched him carefully, shades of intensity hiding behind the lightness in her eyes. “When you moved in,” she said. “I wasn’t even going to talk to you. I was just going to stay in my room all the time.”

His mouth went dry. “And what changed your mind?”

Something sharp and bright swirled in her green eyes for a moment. Then she crinkled her eyes at him in a smile that was breathtakingly familiar. He realized they must be picking up little pieces of one another by living together. He wondered which bits of Sakura had sunk their way into his own life and mannerisms. 

“There was just something about you,” she said.

He leaned in a little closer, focusing on the little flecks of yellowish gold buried amid all the green in her eyes. “I have a secret to tell you,” he whispered conspiratorially.

He sensed her breath stalling in the warm air between them. “Hm?” she hummed in question.

“I wasn’t going to talk to you either.”

He watched a soft and slow smile seep into her eyes. “And what changed your mind,” she echoed.

He felt as though he were standing in the middle of a swirling force, as though he had dug his heels down into some imaginary riverbed to try and resist the flood of it all. He allowed himself to consider, for just one damning instant, what it would be like to just let go.

He leaned in a little closer, the fabric of his bandana barely ghosting over hers. “There was just something about you, Sakura.”

Something large and _thrilling_ moved through her eyes. “Kakashi, I—”

“What the hell are _YOU_ doing here, asshole?”

They jolted apart as if electrified and in his dazed state Kakashi could only register a sudden and overwhelming sense of loss. He turned to look at the front door where Obito’s absurdly loud voice had bellowed. Kakashi glanced to the side and saw Rin, who had probably been watching him and Sakura with bated breath, gaze at the back of Obito’s head with absolute murder in her eyes. Obito would probably catch hell from her later for interrupting him and Sakura, and Kakashi couldn’t help but feel a vindictive sense of pleasure at the idea of him being severely scolded.

There was a man glaring at Obito from the doorway. He had the same dark eyes as Obito and Itachi, and the same dark hair. Kakashi vaguely recognized him as some Uchiha cousin that he had met when he was ten or so. It had probably been at one of the family dinners he had been dragged to with Obito after one of their middle school soccer games.

“I think a better question would be what the hell are _you_ doing here,” the man snapped. “Asshole,” he tagged on as an afterthought.

Kakashi felt like he was a kid all over again watching the horde of Uchiha children vie for dominance amongst one another. He turned down to look at Sakura, a joke on the tip of his tongue, and then realized that she looked like a deer who had just been caught in the headlights of a rapidly oncoming vehicle.

Oh, Kakashi thought.

 _Oh_.

“My friend lives here,” Obito snapped.

“Well, my—” the man faltered suddenly, a brief spell of insecurity flickering across his face before he smoothed it away, “—I know someone living here.”

 _Friend_ , Kakashi’s mind supplied. He hadn’t wanted to say friend. Suddenly Kakashi wanted a couple more drinks.

“You’re friends with Kakashi?” Obito asked in absolute befuddlement.

“No,” Sasuke snapped. “And it’s none of your damn business—”

Itachi peeked his head over Sasuke’s shoulder. “I believe what Sasuke means to say is that we came here to see Sakura, though it seems what we thought were two separate parties are in fact the same party.”

Obito glared at Sasuke. “How do you know Sakura?”

Kakashi loved Obito in that instant for his fierce brand of loyal cluelessness. Obito was a deeply clever man, but some things flew straight over his head. Kakashi saw Rin facepalm off to the side.

Sasuke’s face reddened. “I—”

“They used to date,” Itachi said neatly, still trying to subtly angle himself past his two relatives to actually get inside the apartment. “Can we come inside, Obi—”

“ _YOU_ are _VOLDEMORT_?” Obito cried.

For a moment that sentence registered as utter nonsense to Kakashi, and then he remembered the conversation they had at their first ambushed party over a month ago now.

_“Who is you-know-who,” Obito had asked Sakura. “An ex of yours? Lord Voldemort?”_

Kakashi had the sudden and absurd realization that they had managed to hold a whole conversation about this man without ever saying his name once. Even Kiba had just referred to him as _twerp_. Part of him wanted to laugh manically, and the other part wanted everyone to leave the apartment so he could collect himself.

“No, moron,” snapped the man who was apparently named Sasuke. “I’m a vampire.” He gestured to the fake and pointed stubs on his incisors.

“You sure are,” a new voice mumbled next to him and Sakura. Kakashi glanced down to find Ino unconsciously twirling her bat while she eyed Sasuke. “Sakura, did you know he was coming?”

Kakashi turned almost unwillingly to Sakura, somehow frightened of what he would see on her face. She seemed to have gotten over her initial shock, but her eyes were hard and bright with an undertone of fragility that Kakashi wouldn’t have recognized if he hadn’t spent the last several months watching her put on a brave face before stressful days.

“No,” she said quietly, “Naruto probably invited him. But it makes sense. We agreed to take a few months before we started hanging out again, and it’s been a few months.”

Kakashi tuned back into the conversation they were still having at the door. “No,” Obito was saying loudly, as though he were talking to a small child. “You’re Voldemort.”

“What a clusterfuck,” Ino said.

Kakashi grunted in agreement.

Suddenly a head of blue hair loomed over the arguing cousins. Kakashi recognized the newcomer as Itachi’s boyfriend Kisame. “I just got back from parking the car. What are you still doing at the door?”

Itachi sighed. “Sasuke and my cousin seem to be having some kind of confrontation. I’ll confess that I don’t understand the full gist of it, but I would like to go inside the apartment now.”

Kisame gave Obito a large grin that revealed all his teeth. “Did you hear that, kid? I think Itachi would like to come inside now.”

Obito blinked, seemingly torn between defending what he perceived as his territory and respecting the threat posed by Kisame’s height and muscled bulk. “I—”

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Rin sang, latching her hand onto Obito’s arm and tugging him out of the way. “What a fun coincidence that we all know each other!”

Obito, Sasuke, and Itachi all grunted in disagreement, but they shuffled into the apartment without further incident while Kisame gave Obito a much friendlier toothy grin.

Kakashi grew suddenly aware of the warmth of Sakura at his side, and before he could stop himself he had slipped away from her and averted his eyes. Kakashi had never dealt well with feeling hurt—though he rationally knew Sakura had done nothing to hurt him—and he felt the overwhelming urge to retreat back to safety. He gave Sakura a quick and friendly crinkle of his eyes, not quite seeing her, and ambled off in another direction.

He knew he was acting absurd—so what if Sakura had dated someone? She was an attractive and impressive adult woman; it was basically inevitable. He had his own fair share of people he had seen briefly over the years, though he had never allowed any of those relationships to develop into anything serious. Kakashi began to realize that the cold feeling settling into his stomach wasn’t jealousy.

It felt more like loss. And it was achingly familiar.

He grabbed himself a fresh beer from the fridge and took it over to lean against a wall, intent on licking his wounds and taking a moment for himself. He had just twisted off the top and was taking a long first gulp when a familiar bowl cut slid into view in front of him.

“Hello, my dear rival.”

Kakashi smiled. “Hello, dear rival,” he echoed.

“You seem a little… unhappy,” Gai said tentatively. “Would you like to try some of the granola I brought? 25 grams of protein per cup!”

Kakashi smiled, but he had a feeling that it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That sounds very impressive. I’ll have to try some later.”

Gai gave him a knowing look. The fact that Kakashi hadn’t answered his first question wasn’t lost on him. “That is upsetting to you, is it not?” Gai asked, nodding his head towards where Sakura and Sasuke seemed to be having a tentative and wary conversation.

Kakashi just watched the two of them try to talk to one another and felt very tired. He inclined his head in recognition to Gai. Very few people gave him due credit for his surprising ability to assess the feelings and needs of others. Rin and Obito likely would have been able to pick up on his mood, but their attempt to help would have been composing a complicated battle plan when all he really wanted to do was stand quietly by the wall and sip his drink.

“Yes,” Kakashi finally said, allowing himself to admit the frustrating, embarrassing truth both to himself and to Gai. “It does upset me.”

“I see,” Gai said. There was a long beat of silence as he seemed to consider what to do. “Do you want to which one of us can run around the block five times the fastest?”

Kakashi smiled. “Yes. I would.”

* * *

When Kakashi tumbled back into the apartment with Gai, he was feeling _alive_ and flushed with adrenaline. Sprinting down the street in the cold night air had been like a tonic. His body felt fresh and revived and the endorphins from his run were crowding out the residual feelings of being buzzed and upset. He almost wanted to turn back around and go back out to jog a couple extra miles, but he had the feeling that he should go back inside before his absence was noticed.

He went over to the kitchen counter to pour himself a glass of water while Gai rejoined Rin and Obito in whatever drinking game they were playing. He was just taking a long and refreshing gulp when he sensed someone coming over to stand next to him.

He glanced over, saw Sasuke, and had to force himself not to spit out the water mid-gulp.

“Hey,” Sasuke said neutrally. “You’re Sakura’s new roommate? Kakashi?”

Kakashi swallowed his water and set the glass down on the counter. Sasuke didn’t seem mad—but then again, why would he? Kakashi was just the weird new roommate with a bandana and some incredibly inconvenient and very secret feelings for his silly, loud, annoying, clever, lovely roommate.

“Yup,” Kakashi said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. “That’s me.”

“I’m Sasuke.”

“I know. I heard you by the door.”

Sasuke winced. “Ah, yeah. We’ve always been a… competitive family.”

Kakashi hummed noncommittally, wondering why Sasuke was bothering to talk to him. He didn’t seem like the kind to speak to anyone without a reason.

“So,” Sasuke said a little awkwardly. “How has Sakura been? Is she taking care of herself?”

Ah, there it was. As much as Kakashi wanted to resent Sasuke, he could tell he wasn’t asking in a weird _is she falling apart without me_ manner. It seemed more like he was aware of Sakura’s general inability to feed herself and sleep, and he was interested in how bad it had gotten during the time he spent out of her life. Kakashi reminded himself that Sasuke had never done anything to him, and that he wasn’t the kind of person to hold petty grudges or be possessive.

“She’s not the healthiest person on the planet, but she’s getting by,” Kakashi said. “Lots of protein bars and long nights, but every once in awhile she’ll pass out for half a day to catch up on sleep and eat some real food.”

Sasuke nodded and took a thoughtful sip of his drink. “That’s good.”

Kakashi nodded. It was good.

“Are these for the party?”

Kakashi jolted back from his thoughts and realized Sasuke was pointing at the laxative brownies on the stove that had been shoved to the side so that no one would notice or eat them. No one except for the two people skulking off to the side by the stove instead of participating in the party.

“Um,” Kakashi started.

“Or did Sakura make them and that’s why they’re hidden back here? She’s an awful cook,” Sasuke said with something like an amused smile, though it had no real malice behind it.

Kakashi had a sudden flashback to Sakura gazing in rapture at the bubbling soup on the stove the second week they cooked it together, her eyes wide and pleased as she watched him dump the potatoes that she had chopped unevenly into the pot. _I can’t believe I did this_ her eyes had seemed to say. _I’m so excited that I did this_.

Kakashi appealed to his better nature for a moment and heard nothing back from it. “No, she didn’t make those,” he finally said. “They must have ended back here by accident—help yourself.”

Kakashi watched Sasuke grab a brownie, and decided that if he was going to hell, he might as well get his satisfaction’s worth on the way.

“Do you actually want to take those home with you?”

* * *

When they finally convinced Naruto to leave on Hinata’s shoulder after several long and teary goodbyes (Naruto was an emotional drunk), Kakashi felt ready to sleep for several years. He and Sakura made their way in silence back to the kitchen and surveyed the mess of solo cups and empty bottles everywhere, much in the same way they had looked at the microwave together that morning.

Kakashi snuck at look at her out of the corner of his eye. They hadn’t spoken since that charged moment that had been breathtakingly full of _potential_. He felt a little guilty for trying to get away from her as soon as Sasuke showed up. It wasn’t the behavior of a mature person.

Her brow was furrowed, and she seemed to be thinking about something, but also she didn’t seem upset. She had just taken her bandana off, and he had forgotten how full her bottom lip was.

“So,” he heard himself say. “Did you have fun?”

She cracked a weary smile and turned to him. “Oh yeah. Gai was the best beer pong partner I’ve ever had.”

Kakashi nodded seriously. “He does have incredible hand-eye coordination.”

“So are we going to clean this mess up tonight like responsible adults?”

Kakashi eyed the aftermath of the party. “I don’t feel like it right now.”

Sakura gave him a small smile. “Will we ever feel like it?”

He sighed. “I suppose not.” He shuffled over to the kitchen sink and pulled a fresh trash bag out from under it. “I recommend that we just throw away all the drinks and bottles. We can deal with everything else tomorrow.”

“Deal,” Sakura said, following him around the kitchen. She dumped empty cups into the trash bag with him and moved the full cups over to the sink.

“So,” she said lightly after a few moments of working in silence. “I saw you talking with Sasuke.”

Kakashi panicked but kept his face blank. Had she seen him give Sasuke the fart brownies? Would she be furious with him?

“I was too far away to really see what you guys were doing—” he breathed an internal sigh of relief “—but did you like him?”

Kakashi fought again to keep his face blank. “He seemed concerned about you,” Kakashi said. “He was asking me how you were doing.”

“And what did you tell him?”

Kakashi’s eyes lifted from the red cup of mystery liquid he was dumping out into the sink. Sakura watched him, her green eyes guarded but intent. “I just said you were getting by,” Kakashi said, his mouth going dry. “As best as could be expected.”

She gave him another small smile. “Right.”

They worked together for another few moments and Kakashi gathered the small, tenuous strands of his courage together. “So,” he said nonchalantly. “Are you two getting back together?”

Sakura choked on nothing and tried to cover it with a cough. “Um, no,” she said quickly. “I don’t—I don’t think so.”

Kakashi crinkled his eyes at her, something twisting in his gut. “Are you sure about that?”

She pressed her lips together tightly. “He said he still wants to try, but I think I’m moving past that at this point.”

“Moving?” Kakashi asked lightly. “Or already past it?”

Sakura watched him, her green eyes solemn. “Moving, I think.”

Kakashi nodded and went back to dumping out solo cups. He could work with moving. And moving was honest.

“Besides,” Sakura said softly. “I think I like where I’m at right now.”

A small smile spread over his face. “Me too,” he agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> am i happy with the way that this turned out? no. was i willing to devote 20k words of this fic solely to halloween? potentially. do i have the stamina for that? unfortunately, no. 
> 
> i have so much fun working in the other characters bc i love friendships but they also.... take up lots of space. like hello genma, glad u had ur time to shine but at what cost???
> 
> i want to make it clear i dont intend to demonize sasuke!!! i spent a long time not liking him, like, at all, but then i read some v compelling posts + fics that have made me more... understanding of him and his motivations. he is here to demonstrate that there are some relationships that just work better than others!!! will there be an obnoxious drawn out love triangle (not to bash those, bc i love to consume them on occasion)-- no there will not bc i dont think i could write that dynamic even if i tried to 
> 
> anyways, thank you for reading!!!!!!


	10. Chapter 10

Sakura was tired.

Usually she was able to just push through the ever-present sense of fatigue that pervaded every single bit of her life, but today she felt the weariness deep in her bones as she hauled herself back up the stairs to her apartment. She was already dreaming of curling up in her bed and just reaping the consequences of a full night’s sleep. She could catch up on her work tomorrow when her brain was capable of stringing words together.

She managed to get the front door unlocked and stumbled over to her cabinet in the kitchen. She fished out a protein bar and took a large bite, barely tasting it. She chewed mechanically and stared at the wall. This was bad. She could not afford to be this tired halfway through the week.

She was just turning to go crawl into her bed after the sad makeshift dinner when her phone went off. She fished it out of her pocket and adrenaline shot through her when she recognized Tsunade’s personal number. She had been told only to use it in the most dire of circumstances, but she wasn’t quite sure what it meant that Tsunade was calling _her_. Maybe the lab had burned down? Her mouth went dry as she answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Sakura,” Tsunade barked, the sound of a muffled crowd in the background. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah, I mean, yes—”

“Good. Do you remember the paper I was planning on submitting to the JSR journal tomorrow?”

Sakura blinked, her brain struggling to shed its fog. She had read the paper in its partially completed state last week. Part of being in Tsunade’s research group was learning how to churn out high quality work at the last minute because there was simply too much work to stay on top of at any given moment. Things were done at the last minute because they had to be.

“Um, yes, the one on hemicraniectomy in older patients—”

“Yes, that one.” Tsunade let out a long sigh. “The journal deadline is 9am tomorrow. The resident who was working on it with me has a family emergency and I’m about to step on a twelve hour flight. That paper needs to get published in this issue.”

“Oh, um, that sounds like a problem.” Sakura wondered why, in these last precious moments before her flight, Tsunade had bothered to call her.

“Sakura, I want you to finish writing the paper.”

Sakura wondered if she had finally snapped and started hallucinating. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard what you said. I thought I heard you say—”

“You heard me correctly, Sakura. I want you to finish writing the paper. It’s pretty much done, and there is an outline for the two sections that are missing. You just need to put it into sentences.”

Sakura felt as though the ground was giving out underneath her. “But I—I can’t write it! I’ve never even performed a hemicraniectomy! What if I messed something up and then people _died_ —”

“My flight lands one hour before the deadline. I’ll be able to check it before you submit it, and after we submit we’ll get a round of reviewer feedback. There’s no way anything inaccurate could make it through the publication process. All we need to do is meet this initial deadline.”

The room spun around her. “But still, me? Isn’t there anyone else? What if I—”

“Sakura,” Tsunade said in a gentle but stern voice. “We need to stick to our schedule and get this paper out now. I would not ask you to do this if you weren’t capable.”

“Really?” she whispered in an embarrassingly fragile voice. She waited for Tsunade to yell at her and tell her to get her shit together.

“Absolutely,” Tsunade said. “You’re young but you’re bright, and you’ve read hundreds of these papers over the last year. I know you can do this.”

Sakura pressed a hand to her chest and felt her heart hammering under her palm. She took in a slow breath. “Okay, I’ll try my best.”

“Don’t try, Sakura. _Do it_.”

“I will. Have a safe flight.”

“I’ll send the files to you now. Good luck!”

“Thank—”

Then the line went dead. Sakura slowly drew the phone back from her face and stared at it, wondering what she had just agreed to. Suddenly a wave of panic crashed over her. What had she been thinking? She had just been ready to pass out for a long sleep, yet she had agreed to write sections of a paper that she had no business writing herself—not to mention it needed to be submitted by the next morning. It was _insane_. Accepting the task was the behavior of an irresponsible and insane person who didn’t know her limits. 

Sakura set her phone down on the counter as frustrated heat rushed into her face and her eyes prickled sharply with the beginnings of tears.

It was too much.

Sakura allowed herself to slide down to the floor, her back braced against the cabinets behind her. She wrapped her arms around her knees and started to cry in a way that she hadn’t in a very long time. She cried because Tsunade thought she was good enough when she didn’t feel good enough. She cried because she was already exhausted and just wanted to rest. She cried because she was hungry and nauseous all at once. She cried because her life felt like a giant and unwieldy monster that was completely beyond her control.

She heard a door click open and she realized that she hadn’t even bothered to make it to her room before having her mental breakdown. She buried her warm face against her knees and wondered if Kakashi would notice her if she just held herself very still. Maybe she would get lucky and he would have his nose buried in a book.

The shuffling footsteps came around the corner and Sakura heard him pause. She could just imagine him staring at her and wondering if she had finally lost her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, her warm face still pressed against her knees. She felt like a raw nerve ending, full of sharp and biting pain.

She heard his footsteps approach slowly, and then she sensed a weight settling itself down on the floor beside her. His familiar scent drifted over to her and somehow it made everything better and worse all at once. She nearly choked on a little involuntary sob.

She waited for him to say something along the lines of _why are you bawling on the floor_ but he said nothing. He just sat there with her as she felt hot tears continue to leak out of the corners of her eyes and soak into the fabric of her pants. After what felt like an eternity, but was probably only five minutes, Sakura had tired herself out enough that she was no longer in a frantic state of panic. She was shifting into resigned acceptance and mild terror at the night ahead of her.

She cracked open her eyes and turned her head just slightly enough that she could peek over at Kakashi. His back was also braced against the cabinets, his arms loosely draped around his knees as he stared at the wall ahead of them. When she turned to look at him, he turned to face her as well.

His eyes were soft and concerned as he watched her. Sakura felt like a warm little snot monster, covered with tears and slime and probably with giant purple eyebags to match. She wondered if she would have to hold a symbolic funeral for whatever had been developing between them after he saw her like this. It wasn’t like she walked around looking her best most of the time, but this was certainly a new low.

“Hey,” he said, as though they both weren’t sat on the floor of the kitchen while she unraveled.

She swiped a cautious hand over her eyes. “Hey,” she mumbled, her voice scratchy and thick with crying.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

She pressed her lips together and fought the urge to dissolve back into tears. “My mentor just called. She and this other person writing a paper are busy, and it needs to be finished so that it can be submitted for publication to a journal tomorrow morning.”

“Hmm,” he hummed, continuing to watch her. “And did they rope you into it somehow?”

“Yeah,” Sakura said, her voice cracking halfway through the word. “They want me to write the last two sections. All by myself. I haven’t even performed the surgery that they’re talking about.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That’s a little unreasonable, no?”

“Maybe,” Sakura mumbled, resting the side of her cheek against her knee as she watched him. “But I said I would do it, and now I have to do it. I was so tired when I got home, and now I have to stay up all night.”

His brow furrowed. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

Sakura just nodded, her cheek rubbing against the soft fabric of her pants.

Kakashi sighed. “Alright then. We’re going to start with real dinner and a shower.”

“I don’t have time—”

“You’re not going to be able to do any work at all if you don’t take care of yourself before you start.”

Sakura sighed. He wasn’t wrong.

“Look,” he said. “I’ll make dinner, you go shower.”

“You don’t have t—”

“You didn’t ask me to. I offered.”

She stared at him for a long moment. His eyes were smiling gently at her, his posture mirroring hers with the side of a bandana-covered cheek resting against his knees. The swell of emotion that rose up in her when she realized he wasn’t freaked out by her crying on the floor and that he was going to try and help was overwhelming.

Before she could form another thought she had hurled herself forward, her head burying itself in his shoulder to take in his familiar warm scent and her arms latching around him tightly. She felt new tears squeezing out of the corners of her eyes as she clung to him.

She half expected him to gently disentangle her and push her way, but after a long moment his arms lifted to lightly wrap around her. She felt his hand tentatively patting her back.

“Thank you,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “Thank you so much.”

“No worries,” he said quietly. “I don’t mind helping.”

She clung to him a little tighter and allowed herself to enjoy it for a few more moments before she leaned back, swiping at her eyes. She gave him a teary smile and dragged herself up from the floor.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to go shower and pull myself together so I can do this.”

He crinkled his eyes up at her and her heart twisted with what felt like agony and joy all at once. “Good plan,” he said.

* * *

Sakura came out of her room after a brief shower, still toweling her wet hair. As soon as her door swung open, she was hit by the smell of breakfast. She found Kakashi at the stove in the kitchen, peeling an omelet out of a pan and onto a plate. He turned and held it out to her as she blinked in surprise.

“Thank you. I didn’t know you made omelets.”

He turned back to the stove and started dumping dishes into the sink. “Eggs are brain food.”

She smiled as she grabbed herself a fork from the drawer. “Says who,” she asked around a mouthful of eggs.

“Says real adults.”

“Well, we definitely have to listen to them.”

Kakashi grabbed his own plate and joined her at the table, shoveling bites of food down behind his bandana. “So I was thinking,” he said in between inhaling eggs. “I could stay up and keep you company.”

Sakura’s fork paused halfway to her mouth. She stared at him. He seemed determined to avoid meeting her eyes under the guise of eating more eggs. “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “I’m going to be up all night.”

He just shrugged. “I have a lot of reading to catch up on. And I can throw water on you if you start dozing off.”

Sakura smiled, but she felt her eyes prickling again with the beginnings of tears. She wondered what she had done to deserve living with Kakashi. “That would be really nice,” she said with a small sniffle. She shoved more eggs into her mouth to stave off the beginnings of another emotional meltdown.

He shot her a quick eye crinkle. “I was serious about the water. I woke Obito up like that once and I’ve been wanting to do it again ever since.”

Sakura eyed him, wondering just how serious he was being. “I can’t promise I’ll respond nonviolently if I get water dumped on me at 4am.”

Kakashi shrugged again. “The microwave is already broken. How much more damage could we really do?”

Sakura smiled as she watched him. How much more damage indeed.

* * *

It was nearing 2am when she felt Kakashi’s hand settle on her shoulder. She jolted up from her slumped over position and heard her neck and back crack grotesquely.

“Ow,” she mumbled, rubbing at her head. She could feel the imprint of her keyboard on her forehead.

“You fell asleep ten minutes ago. I let you have a little powernap.”

Sakura squinted her eyes and looked up at him. He was looking tired too, his silver hair more rumpled than usual and a little extra slouch to his shoulders. She frowned. “You look tired.”

His eyes crinkled in amusement. “You must cease with these glowing compliments. They make me feel so good about myself.”

She grinned and leaned back in her chair, realizing that his hand was still resting on her shoulder. He didn’t seem to realize he had left it there. “Oh darling and handsome Kakashi, I could write odes to the twinkle in your lovely eyes—”

“Cut it out,” he grumbled, but Sakura was floored to see a small tint of redness in his cheeks. She smiled up at him for a moment before she remembered the reason why they were both awake.

She looked back at her computer screen and sighed. She was nearly done with one of the two sections. The outline that Tsunade and the resident had made was comprehensive, but it was important to be carefully explicit about the small details of their work. She triple-checked every single sentence she wrote to make sure what she was saying was accurate, but it was beginning to feel like the writing itself was becoming awkward and clunky because so much of her energy was focused on the content.

“How’s it going?”

Sakura looked back up at Kakashi to find him squinting at her computer screen. “Not great,” she admitted. I’m like halfway done-ish, but the writing feels bad. It’s not like medical journals care a ton about style, but Tsunade won’t submit something that doesn’t read well.”

“Maybe I can help with that.”

“How?”

He gave her an amused look. “Well, as you have observed on many occasions, I do have to write things. I know literally nothing about anything you’re describing, but I can manage sentence structures.”

Sakura blinked at him. “But this is medical writing. It’s very different—"

He shrugged. “I’m really good at copying things. I have a talent for it.”

She gaped at him and he rolled his eyes. “Not plagiarism. I’m good at copying the style of something. If you give me a couple similar papers to read so I can see what it should look like, I can help reshape it.”

“You would do that,” she whispered.

He stared at her for a long moment. “Of course I would,” he finally said, leaning back with an easy crinkle of his eyes. She felt the weight of his hand lift from her back as he shoved his hands into his pockets. Sakura’s mind wanted to start running a million miles a minute to try and figure out what was going on inside his head, but she refused to allow it. This paper _had_ to be finished, come hell or highwater.

“Okay,” she said, shoving the tempting and distracting thoughts away. “I’ll email you a couple papers Tsunade and I worked on and you can get a feel from those?”

He nodded and padded back over to the couch. “Sounds good.”

Sakura had inched her way through another few sentences when he spoke again. “You have a really big brain.”

She turned around so quickly that her neck cracked. “Excuse me? Is that supposed to be some joke about the size of my forehead—”

“No, no,” he held up his hands in defense though it was clear that he was amused. “I’m just saying this stuff you’re writing about is very dense. It is impressive that you know what—” he glanced back down at his computer screen before looking back up “— the sphenoidal segment of the middle cerebral artery is.”

Sakura processed the realization that he was complimenting her. “Oh. Well, thank you.”

“Give me twenty more minutes and I can help edit.”

“Thank you,” she mumbled, turning back to her computer with a new warm feeling glowing in her chest. The voice of her inner critic was so loud that she often forgot what she was doing was, in some ways, very impressive. She allowed herself to feel pride for half a second before she smothered it away beneath the panic of needing to get her work done.

Several miserable minutes of writing sentences later, Kakashi sighed and said, “Okay, I think I get what you’re going for.”

Sakura jumped up from her chair at the table, thrilled to have a reason to move. She snatched her laptop and came over to dump herself on the couch beside him. He set his laptop to the side and gestured for hers. He squinted down at her first paragraph, his brow furrowed in thought.

“Okay,” he finally said, creating a copy of the original paragraph and then starting to type. “What if switched this clause with this one… Combined here… Separated these…”

Sakura watched, absolutely dumbfounded, as the paragraph’s writing style became indistinguishable from the style Tsunade and the resident had used in the first part of the paper. All he was doing was switching around punctuation and the order of words within sentences, but it was like he was chipping away at the clunky blob she had written to turn it into something that seamlessly blended into the rest of the paper.

“How are you doing that? That, that’s—sorcery! Witchcraft!”

He shot her a slightly smug look out of the corner of his grey eyes. “I’m not doing anything that impressive—you did all the work by writing the facts out in a coherent way. I’m just changing the packaging. You could have done this yourself if you weren’t running on three hours of sleep from last night.”

“Still! This is incredible! It is like Tsunade wrote this herself.”

He just shrugged. “She has three sentence structures she uses a lot. Just alternate them and you’re set.”

She grinned at him. “Kakashi,” she said very seriously. “You have a really big brain.”

He blinked at her, and then a small touch of color warmed his cheeks before he looked back at the laptop screen with an exasperated shake of his head. “I’ll keep editing while you write the rest. We have what, like five hours left?”

Sakura smiled at him and his unconscious use of the word _we_. Her problem had become _their_ problem. She decided not to get up from the couch to go back to the table. She could work here instead.

* * *

It was nearly 6am when the exhaustion really started to hit them. Sakura was used to the pre-dawn intensification of fatigue, but poor Kakashi looked decidedly droopy as he plunked away at the keys on his laptop. At some point—she couldn’t remember when—she had unconsciously slid her fuzzy sock covered feet under the side of his leg. He hadn’t seemed to notice, and evidently neither had she.

She watched him for a moment, utterly blown away by how easy the decision to help her had been for him.

“I’m hungry,” she said, deciding they both could use a small distraction.

His head lifted from his work. “And?”

“And I think you’ve treated me to enough Uber Eats food and it is my turn to treat you.”

He blinked at her blearily. “Is anything even open? It’s—” he glanced down at his watch“—the ass crack of dawn.”

“We can check,” Sakura said diplomatically. She scooted closer to him on the couch and opened up her app so that they could scroll through together. Everything was closed except for—

“Donuts,” Kakashi said in dry voice.

“Donuts can be a meal,” Sakura said defensively.

He watched her for a moment, a little bit of amusement unfurling in his eyes. “Was this your plan all along? To turn me into you?”

She grinned and nudged him with a foot that was still buried under his leg. “Is that you admitting that you want to have donuts for pre-breakfast?”

He sighed wearily. “Potentially.”

She held her phone out. “So, theoretically, if you did want donuts, feel free to pick a few.”

He scowled at her but took the phone and silently added a few to the cart. When she took her phone back she snorted at him. “These are so boring! Did you see all the fun flavors they have? Why would you get glazed—”

“I like what I like,” he snapped. “I didn’t realize you were a donut connoisseur.”

She just smirked and added a few more elaborate donuts to the cart. “It’s okay. When you inevitably realize I ordered better ones, I’ll be willing to share.”

“Hmph,” he grunted, going back to looking at his laptop screen. After a few more moments of work, he sighed and got up. “I’ll be right back.”

She heard him opening the door to his room and when she turned around at the sound of him coming back she nearly fell off the couch.

“You wear _glasses_?”

He glowered at her from behind his vaguely modern looking square frames. “Only when I get headaches from reading off screens for too long.”

She grinned and admired the look on him. “You look very handsome. Like a real scholar. The bandana really adds some spice to it—you look like you’re on your way to steal a rare book or something.”

He scowled, but the small tint in his cheeks was back. “Yes,” he snapped, as he returned to the couch and fell back onto it. “Because my goal at 6am in the morning is to make myself look as appealing as possible.”

Sakura noticed he had sat back down in a way that put her feet underneath his leg again. She tried not to wonder if that was intentional. “Did you pick them out yourself?”

“Yes,” he said flatly.

Sakura raised an eyebrow and he shot her an irritated look. “Obito and Rin might have offered their opinions but they are _my_ glasses.”

She grinned. “They did a good job.”

“Hmph.”

* * *

When 8am rolled around, the two paper sections were done, and Sakura felt like a zombie. What had nearly been an all-nighter the previous night had not set her up for success with pulling off a second all-nighter this night. Still, the paper sections were done, and Kakashi had blended their writing structure into the rest of the paper. They both gazed at the finished document sitting on Sakura’s computer.

She silently imported the file into an email to Tsunade and typed out a brief message. She stared at it with bated breath until she felt a hand settle on her shoulder.

“It’s done. You did it. Press send.”

She nodded numbly and hit the send button, letting out a slow exhale through her nose. “Now we wait,” she murmured. “The deadline is at 9am, so she has one hour to double-check it.”

Kakashi leaned back into the couch with a tired sigh. “I think she will like it.” He thought for a moment. “She _better_ like it.”

Sakura gave him a feeble grin. “Tsunade does as she pleases.”

She leaned back on the couch with him, her head resting lightly on his shoulder as they both stared at the wall in front of them in exhausted silence. Sakura felt an overwhelming sense of relief and gratitude that would have been impossible to put into words in her exhausted state. Instead, she rested her hand on his knee and squeezed. She waited for him to tense—as she always did when she tried these daring little bits of physical affection—but he just shifted almost imperceptibly closer to her so that her head rested more firmly against his shoulder.

Sakura was just beginning to doze off when her computer pinged with the sound of a new email. She jolted up and her eyes latched feverishly onto the brief message Tsunade had sent in reply.

_Tsunade (8:17am):_

great job. no edits necessary. proud of u. submitting it now.

Sent from my iPhone

Sakura stared at it in disbelief while Kakashi chuckled tiredly with a slight manic undertone. “Hours of overnight labor and we get an iPhone email with no capitaliz—”

But then she was hugging him, her face buried in her chest. “She liked it,” Sakura was mumbling involuntarily into his sweater. “She actually liked it.”

He stilled, and then a hand came up to press gently against her back. “Of course she did,” he said, his voice a warm rumble against her cheek.

“Thank you,” Sakura whispered, feeling as though she meant it more than she had ever meant anything before in her life, though it was probably just the fatigue and the come down from adrenaline magnifying everything in her mind.

“You’re welcome,” he just said simply.

Sakura drew back and smiled up into his grey eyes. He had large purple bags underneath them now to match hers. She pointed to the bags on her own face and smirked tiredly. “We match.”

He rolled his eyes and slumped down so that he was lying on the couch. “I’m sure we do. I don’t know how you live like this. I barely have enough energy to make it through the day after getting actual sleep.”

Sakura debated the risks for a moment before she decided that she was simply too tired to care. She eased herself down beside him so that she was also lying on the couch and facing him. There was still a few inches left between them, but she felt much closer to him than she had ever been before. If she weren’t so tired she would be panicking about it, but all that registered in her mind was a feeling of quiet fatigue and comfort at being close to another human being.

He blinked at her, long and slow behind his glasses which were clumsily askew. She saw little blueish flecks of color in his magnified grey eyes. “You’re sleeping here, too?”

“Too tired to move,” she mumbled. She burrowed forward until her head was pressed against his sweater again. She mused in her half-asleep state that it was quickly becoming her favorite place.

She felt him unhook the glasses from his face and set them on the end table. Then one arm settled tiredly over her side. “Don’t kick me in your sleep,” he mumbled. “Or I’ll shove you on the floor.”

“Deal,” she said, pressing just a little bit closer before she felt herself slip off into a warm and contented sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im just out here being soft... who here has ever cried at the stress of being overworked and fantasized about having someone there 2 be along for the ride in all the right ways???
> 
> thank u for reading! more plot-based bits to come-- i just needed this for my own wish fulfillment! thank you for all the kind and lovely comments you leave. they truly get me through each week.


	11. Chapter 11

Kakashi woke up to the feeling of utter pain in his lower back. He cringed at the ache throbbing lowly in his vertebrae, and he came to the slow and sleepy realization that he was not in his bed. He realized his back was aching because he was firmly wedged against the inside of the couch.

Then he realized that he was not alone on the far-too-small-couch, and that there was another body next to his, breathing softly.

Part of him wanted to fly into a panic as he registered the fact that Sakura was tucked against his side, her hand loosely curled in the slouchy collar of his sweater, his arm and one of his legs casually thrown over her to prevent her from rolling off the couch. And yet, for all the reasons there were to panic—and there were _many_ compelling reasons to panic—he found that he was simply too tired. There was no simple way to get himself out of this situation, and the enormity of it all was so overwhelming that he couldn’t bring himself to react.

He let his head drop back onto the couch, his chin tucking back over her head. She was very warm, he mused to himself, despite the fact that she was always stomping around in multiple layers and complaining about how cold it was in the apartment.

They had seemed to have unconsciously found the most comfortable way to mesh together in their sleep without falling off the couch. Her head fit surprisingly well in the crook beneath his neck, her warm breath coming in small puffs against his skin. Her fingers flexed unconsciously in her sleep and her knuckles brushed lightly against his against his collarbone. All he could see of her was the few random locks of pink hair that had sprung up into his field of vision.

Kakashi realized with some trepidation, despite his body’s protests at the scrunched position, that he hadn’t felt so content and rested in a long, long time. Perhaps even more concerning was his utter lack of desire to move even an inch.

He sensed another solid weight resting on his legs and producing its own breathing pattern. He cast a glance at the other end of the couch and found Pakkun curled up at the other end of the couch on top of his and Sakua’s legs. Pakkun’s little eyes were scrunched shut and his gleaming nose twitched as he dreamed. Kakashi glanced over at the window and tried to gauge what time it was, but all he could glean was that it was sometime in the afternoon based on the warm streaks of light that stretched in columns on the floor.

He closed his eyes and refused to think too hard about the situation as he rolled Sakura a little further away from the edge of the couch—a little more firmly against his chest—and settled back in for more sleep. He wasn’t ready to move yet, and he didn’t want to be the one to handle the fact that they were basically entwined. She could wake up later and yell at him or peel herself off the couch while he was still sleeping, but it would have to be her call.

He told himself that it was because he couldn’t be bothered, but really, as he was drifting back into sleep, he wondered if it was just a more passive form of bargaining.

* * *

Kakashi woke up a second time to the feeling of something moving against his chest. He opened his eyes groggily and glanced down to find _green_ very close to his face. He blinked, and the green blinked back at him.

“Hello,” he managed in his still half-asleep state.

“Hello yourself,” she mumbled back up at him.

As awareness filtered back to him, he felt the slow thrills of panic creeping back into his mind as he waited for Sakura to react. Had she realized they were so close? Was she gearing up to yell at him, or perhaps even worse, act embarrassed and pretend it hadn’t happened? He wasn’t sure himself how he even wanted her to react—because _truly_ , what _did_ he want?

He waited, keeping himself very still in the warm and muffled silence. Sakura just stared up at him, her eyes inscrutable, until a faint and familiar teasing light began to emerge in them.

“Your breath smells,” she said.

He stared for a moment before he processed what she said and scowled. “You’re not smelling too fresh yourself.”

A small grin unfolded on her face. “Do you know why I can smell your stinky breath so well?”

He glared. “Feel free to enlighten me.”

She extracted her arm from where it had been scrunched between then and lifted her hand to his face. She prodded his chin with the tip of her finger, and wait, was it his _bare skin_ —

“The couch ate your bandana,” she observed dryly.

He clapped a hand to the lower half of his face while her eyes just gleamed, mere inches away. “You planned this,” he mumbled between his fingers, feeling very childish.

Her grin grew. “I wish I had. That’s about the only thing that could have made this even better. Come on, I’ve already seen.”

He watched her carefully. She was right—she had seen his face twice now, but it had never really been about that for him, had it? It wasn’t about people seeing his face on occasion or knowing what he looked like under his bandana. It was about being _seen_ , about being made accessible to other people, about knowing that if he was going to be watched that it was going to be on his own terms.

He lowered his hand and he watched her eyes follow the movement. Perhaps being watched by Sakura would not be the end of the world.

Her eyes were thoughtful as she reached out into the small, cramped space between them. Her thumb swept along his jaw, tracing the line of it all the way to his neck. She smiled and gently pressed a finger to the tiny mole at the corner of his mouth.

“Very nice,” she said.

He frowned at her, but the depth of feeling unfolding in his chest was utterly terrifying.

“I know,” he snarked back.

She grinned and then sighed. Her head dipped down as she scrunched in on herself. He felt the cold tip of her nose brush his collarbone as she burrowed back into his sweater.

“What time even is it,” she muttered against his chest, sending thrills down the back of his spine.

“Late enough that we probably slept through any obligations we had today.” He lifted the arm that was draped over her side and peered at his watch. “It’s 3pm.”

“Oh nooo,” Sakura mumbled, though she didn’t seem particularly upset about it. “I’m going to be dead.”

“Just have your mentor write you an excuse of some kind. Given that you covered her ass, I think she should provide you with at least that much.”

Sakura’s arm that was still crushed between them pinched his shoulder and he yelped. “No talking about Tsunade’s ass,” she grumbled.

He glared down at the top of her head. “So that’s all the thanks I get? My sleeping schedule is probably messed up for the next decade, and you tell me I smell and then you pinch me?”

Her head tilted up and the green of her eyes reappeared. His mouth went dry and he immediately regretted having prodded her back into looking at him. She had a new and serious look as she watched him.

“I’ll never know how to thank you for doing that,” she said quietly. “I don’t think you know how much it meant to me that you were willing to help.”

He felt his face warming. He had never really learned how to deal gracefully with someone expressing their gratitude to him, and it was made all the more difficult by the fact that they were tangled together, mere inches apart, and it somehow felt like the most natural thing in the world.

“It’s fine,” he finally said. “I think the breakdown was a long time coming.”

Sakura sighed. “I need to make some lifestyle changes, don’t I?”

He hummed diplomatically. “I think that would be wise.”

“Hmph.”

They laid there together in silence. Kakashi was beginning to wonder if they were ever going to address the obvious and glaring fact that they had fallen asleep tangled together, woken up tangled together, and had made absolutely no attempt to move. He wondered if Sakura’s method of coping with the enormity of it all was the same as his—pretending it was normal and waiting for him to do something about it rather than her. It was beginning to feel like they were playing a long and slow game of chicken.

“Even Pakkun joined,” she finally said, shifting slightly against his side to peer down at the small dog.

“He usually sleeps in my bed.”

Sakura cooed. “Very cute. See, I knew I was right—all this fuss about how cool and mysterious you are, and underneath it you’re just a big puddle of goo.”

He scowled. “I am not goo. I’m not certain what I am, but I am certain that it is not _goo_.” He pondered her assessment of him for a moment and then raised his eyebrows at her. “I’m cool? And mysterious?”

He watched pink spread across her face. “Absolutely not. You live like an old man. I was talking about your attempt to be _perceived_ as such.”

He smiled down at her. “I make no attempts to affect how I’m perceived by others.”

Sakura snorted. “We all make attempts to affect how we are perceived by others.”

“Not me. I’m too lazy.”

“See,” she said, jabbing him in the stomach with a sharp finger. He let out a quiet _oof_. “That was an attempt right there. You say you’re too lazy, but you just stayed up for a full twenty-four hours and learned how to write like a medical journal author in twenty minutes. That is not the behavior of a lazy person.”

He watched her silently, trying to figure out the best way to proceed. She was right that what he had done was deeply out of character, and she couldn’t be completely clueless about _why_ he had done it. Of course, if one of his friends had been suffering, he would have stayed up to provide moral support. He would not have shared donuts with them and slept in a giant tangled heap with them on the couch.

Rin and Obito usually got the most physical affection out of him—ruffling his hair, slinging arms around his shoulders, and pulling him in for crushing hugs. He always accepted it with a small amount of chagrin, tolerating it and enjoying it for brief moments before shrugging away because he didn’t know what to do with himself.

But this—lying here with one of her legs between his, the solid warmth of her torso under his arm, the tickling of her hair at his chin, the way he could count eyelashes, pale freckles, flecks of odd colors in her eyes—this was _new._

And perhaps even newer was the realization that he didn’t want it to end. He didn’t want to shrug away or sheepishly extract himself from the cozy warmth of this small space, where she teased him and prodded him like it was the most natural thing in the world. She acted like being this close was simple and obvious. 

Maybe it was.

He was snapped out of his thoughts by a sudden stomach gurgle. He gazed down at Sakura with no small amount of amusement.

“Hungry?”

A small line appeared on her brow as she frowned at him. “ _Yes._ Aren’t you?”

He considered the question—his body mainly just felt exhausted. As odd as his sleeping schedule was, he wasn’t accustomed to sleepless nights in the way Sakura was.

“I suppose?” He finally mused. “I don’t think we have any breakfast ingredients left. I don’t feel like making food.”

Sakura sighed with great melodrama. “I’m too lazy to cook—”

“Nor should you be allowed to cook on your own,” he agreed.

She gave him a searing look. “Not everyone can be as good at everything as you are, Kakashi.”

“Being able to make scrambled eggs is not impressive—it is basic human functioning.”

“Blah blah, basic human functioning, I’m so superior.” she parroted in a falsetto voice.

He was opening his mouth to reply when her stomach grumbled again. He felt it vibrating against his side and he eyed her skeptically. “So what are we going to eat?”

She looked thoughtful for a moment, the line reappearing on her forehead. He resisted the urge to trace it with his finger, or, since he was close enough, with his lips—

“Donuts,” she said decisively. “We still have donuts.”

He blinked and refocused. “Absolutely not,” he said. “We cannot eat donuts for 6am breakfast and then have them again for 4pm lunch.”

She pinned him with a sharp look. “Why not?”

“We might keel over and die.”

She grinned. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take for easy food.”

He stared down at her and wondered how she had managed to wrap him around her finger and drag him along for the ride, bad habits and all. He let out a weary sigh. “Do you promise we will eat real dinner later?”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever gets you through it.”

He tried to give her an unimpressed look, but he felt the corner of his mouth twitching upwards. Her eyes flicked down to his mouth for a moment, watching his reluctant half-smile, before they darted back up to meet his gaze.

For a moment he thought she would say something. There was something heavy in her eyes as she watched him. He was suddenly aware, again, of just how little space there was between them. Her breath was warm against his face, and her hand that was resting lightly on the side of his rib cage was suddenly electric and full of _potential._

Her hand lifted from his side and he wondered if she felt his breath become shallow as she placed her palm on his face. She cupped his chin, and the pad of her thumb rested just on the corner of his mouth. If the way she had prodded his chin earlier had been teasing, this felt entirely different. He just stared, his eyes locked on her face to see what she would do.

She lifted her eyes up from his mouth. She gave him a weak smile, but underneath it something was burning in her eyes. “You have a very nice smile, Kakashi,” she said quietly, something almost like a rasp in her voice.

“Usually I see the smile here,” she said tracing the tip of a finger up to the corner of his eye. “But now,” she continued, drawing her finger back down to the corner of his mouth, “I can see it here.”

He just stared, utterly overcome with a myriad of conflicting thoughts and feelings. She seemed to realize that what she had said had shaken him, because she blinked away some of the intensity in her eyes and gave him a sheepish smile.

“I’ll make us some coffee for the donuts,” she said, rolling herself gently out of his loose grip, untangling her legs from his. She pulled her other arm out of where it had been scrunched between them, and he had to stop himself from tugging her back.

The sudden empty space where she had once been pressed against him was jarring. Pakkun let out a disgruntled little _hmph_ as she slid her leg out from under him and Kakashi couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. He watched Sakura pad over to the kitchen counter and start dumping coffee grounds into her overused French press.

He closed his eyes and leaned back into the couch for a moment to process what had just happened. A powerful and new feeling had swept over him when she traced over his face. He’d had no idea how she was going to react when she woke up, but he certainly hadn’t expected whatever _that_ was. It certainly hadn’t been unenjoyable. In fact, it had been far more than enjoyable—it had been intimate, thrilling, wonderful—

He let out a long, slow breath through his nose. He knew whatever was going on between them was moving slowly, but sometimes it felt like everything was moving far too quickly. He’d never wanted a relationship for many reasons, and he had never found it difficult to avoid them in the past. Whatever this dynamic was, it was certainly unplanned for. It was so far outside of his comfort zone that his comfort zone was a mere distant speck on the horizon.

He sensed a presence above him and cracked an eye back open to find Sakura gazing down at him, something sympathetic in her expression. She wordlessly extended a mug of coffee and the smell wafted down to him. He forced himself up into a sitting position and his back creaked as he finally folded himself out of the inside of the couch.

“Ow,” he winced, pulling his legs out from under Pakkun to swing them off the couch. Pakkun shot him an exceptionally dirty look and Kakashi raised his brow. He accepted the warm mug from Sakura, his eyes still on Pakkun.

“I think you’ve had a bad influence on Pakkun. He never used to be this moody.”

Sakura grinned. “Do you really think so?”

“No need to be so pleased about it,” he muttered, taking a fortifying sip of coffee. Sakura always made her coffee exceptionally strong and he was beginning to understand why. It was nearly 4pm but he felt ready to guzzle more coffee than he ever had in his life.

“Come eat your donut lunch at the table. I put them on plates so we can pretend to be adults.”

He snorted. “Yes, plating the donuts changes everything.”

Nevertheless, he forced himself to his feet and ambled over to the table where the remnants of their donut breakfast had indeed been put on plates. He’d been annoyed when she teased him for ordering _boring_ glazed donuts, but he found himself eyeing one covered in what looked like crumbled Oreos as he sank down into a chair. Sakura sat opposite from him, sipping her own mug of coffee.

As he sat there in the late afternoon light, silently picking apart a donut while Sakura did the same, he felt some of the tension that had been rattling around inside him slip away. He snuck a glance at her and watched as she picked up the Oreo donut he had been eyeing and tore it in half, absently placing the second half on his plate as she took another sip of her coffee.

He stared down at his half of the donut, reveling in the quiet simplicity of someone deciding to preemptively share with him.

She had given him the bigger half.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MORE PLOTLESS SOFTNESS. 
> 
> sorry this is so late!!! i had Big Block while trying to write this and IDEK why! hopefully after this ill be back on the once a week schedule! On one of the off weeks I also wrote this short [little soccer one-shot ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29552505) with similar banter-y vibes if u would like more content to supplement this short-ish chapter. 
> 
> thank u for reading and thank u for the lovely comments! have been busy/drained w life so havent replied to all of them but pls know i reread them once daily and whenever i need to Feel Alive. hope u are safe n happy!


	12. Chapter 12

“This stinks.”

Rin shot him a blistering glare over her mountain of ribbon. “Kakashi, if you tell me that the candles I’ve spent the last seven hours putting into these ugly little baskets _stink_ one more time, I’m smashing one over your head. You’ve only just joined, so you have no right to act so long-suffering.”

Obito poured himself another shot from the bottle that was half-buried in the pile of gift basket paraphernalia. Kakashi eyed it all with distaste as Obito flicked the shot back and set the small glass back down on the table with a clack.

“Yeah, Kakashi,” he said. “These candles are very important to us.”

Kakashi stuffed a candle he had tied with ribbon into the basket he was assembling. “And why, exactly, are we making baskets for an event that isn’t even your wedding? Shouldn’t there be only one basket-making occasion?”

Rin groaned and gestured for Obito to pass her the bottle. “Because this dumb idiot comes from a family where each wedding is treated like the royal wedding. We’re being forced into this pre-game wedding shower, and when done by normal people, that’s usually just a regular old party—”

Obito poured Rin a shot and passed it to her. “But my family,” he continued, as she gulped, “is a pain in the ass. So this has become a black tie affair.”

“Black tie,” Kakashi said, suddenly on alert. “You mean I’ll have to dress up for this fake pre-game wedding?”

Rin snorted. “You cannot pretend like you’re the one in the most pain here. You will put on your stupid little suit and you will conduct yourself with great poise, as we all know you can.”

“Yeah,” Obito said, jabbing Kakashi with his foot around the coffee table that they were all seated around on the floor. “No porn.”

Kakashi scowled. “You two can’t boss me around. If you start ganging up on me I might try to wreck the wedding.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Rin said with a tipsy giggle. “We can’t boss you around anymore. That’s _Sakura’s_ job now.”

Obito broke out into donkey-like braying laughter, doubling over and clutching his stomach while Kakashi frowned. It hadn’t been a funny joke, but they were all reaching the threshold of being tipsy enough that anything vaguely humorous was perceived as wildly entertaining.

“Sakura doesn’t boss me around,” he snapped, reaching for the bottle and pouring himself a shot.

“No,” Rin agreed, swiping the back of her hand over the corners of her watering eyes. “You just fall into line of your own accord, which is far more endearing.”

Kakashi pointedly ignored the startling truth in Rin’s assessment by knocking the shot back and grimacing around the bitterness in his mouth and the burn in his throat. He looked back at his pile of candles and ribbons and sighed. Some problems were far easier to solve than others.

“How is that going, by the way,” Obito asked. He was still wheezing with aftershocks of laughter.

“How is what going?” Kakashi replied in a brittle voice as he sniped a ribbon in the precise way that Rin had drilled into his head.

“You know,” Obito said as he waved his hand vaguely in the air. “The falling in love, the feelings, the cohabiting—all of it.”

Kakashi snorted. “There is no falling in love.”

“Liar,” Rin barked loudly, making both Kakashi and Obito jolt. “We saw it! All your dumb little lingering glances, the giggling, the _food sharing_ , etcetera!”

“Etcetera!” Obito parroted in enthusiastic and tipsy support while Rin nodded self-righteously.

For a moment Kakashi felt utter panic—had they snuck in with the spare key and watched him share donuts with Sakura? Installed cameras somewhere in the apartment? Then he remembered he had shared hash browns with Sakura after his half-marathon, and that was probably the food sharing moment they were referring to. Kakashi wouldn’t know what to do if they became aware of the all-nighter and the split donut that had plagued Kakashi’s thoughts for the last twenty-four hours. They’d never let him live it down.

“Look at him,” Rin cried with glee. “Sitting over there _pondering_ , not even defending himself!”

“Pondering!” Obito agreed dutifully, pouring out another shot.

Kakashi sighed and gestured impatiently for the bottle. “You both are aware that I do not fall in love.”

Rin sobered a bit and hesitated. “Well, you’ve never really told us why, and we have a feeling it isn’t some fuckboy reason—”

“ _We_ ,” Kakashi repeated with a small amount of dark amusement, snatching the bottle back from Obito. “Are you and Obito a hive mind now? Do you keep notes on the spectrum of how fuckboy-esque my behavior is?”

“No,” Obito interjected, “You’re too stoic to have an ounce of fuckboy in you. We just wonder why you don’t want a relationship when you’ve seen the flourishing success of ours.”

Kakashi brandished a candle at them. “It is 10pm on a Saturday night, and we are putting ribbons on foul-smelling candles to appease your mother. You call this a flourishing success?”

“Quit changing the subject,” Rin snapped. She nudged Kakashi hard with her foot. “If it is deeply personal then you can tell us to bug off, but seriously, why not?”

Kakashi began pouring himself another shot and tried to ignore the heavy weight of their gazes on him. The real reason was supremely depressing, and not something he wanted to discuss while tipsy over a table overflowing with taffeta and dried flowers.

It had to do with his father—of having been made witness to an insurmountable grief when his mother had died. Children do not understand much of grief, but they understand the signals of it. They understand the parent who is more tired than usual. They understand the lazy breakfasts and dinners; the lack of ceremony in eating and the quiet defeat in having the same meals each night. They understand the long pauses before questions are answered or thoughts are addressed.

Kakashi had witnessed the catastrophic fallout of what happened when one loved and when one lost, through no fault of one’s own, the person they considered their partner. It had been no one’s fault that his mother had died. There had been no way to know it would happen and no way to prevent it from happening. This was what scared him—the utter vulnerability of loving something so fragile, something so fleeting, as another human life. He’d only had a few years with his father after his mother had died, but he had seen how hard they were for him.

“It is deeply personal,” he finally said to Rin and Obito, crinkling his eyes at them. “So bug off.”

Rin sighed and tipsily patted the hand he had left on the table. “We understand. Share what you want to. But just know, we think Sakura is great.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear.”

“Get back to folding,” Obito said. He threw a candle at Kakashi that he only just barely managed to catch. “We didn’t invite you here to have fun. We invited you here to do work.”

“Right, how could I have been so selfish?”

With that they slid easily back into their tipsy basket-making, poking fun at one another and sharing stories from their weeks. Being friends with Rin and Obito had always been easy, Kakashi mused from behind his warm tipsy haze. Logically he should be afraid of being their friend. The love he felt for them wasn’t the love he felt for someone he would consider a partner, but he would be just as devastated if he lost one of them.

He thought, as he tied an elaborate bow on a particularly stinky candle, that perhaps this was the silver lining. Rin and Obito—and Gai and Genma for that matter—were proof that he could get over his fear of attaching himself to other people. They were proof he could do it again.

Yet still, it was a frightening thing to do with a romantic relationship. Partners were people you came home to at the end of a day. He used to come home to Rin and Obito. They hadn’t put any pressure on him to move out, but it was clear they needed some time to be wrapped up in each other. He knew they would always be his close friends and that he could live with them and be the odd uncle however long he chose to later in life. That certainty had always been more than enough for him.

But then he had gotten used to coming home to another person. The more he tried not to think about it, the more he thought about it.

He glanced up from the candle he was decorating with clumsy and tipsy fingers to find Rin snoring across from him. Her back was braced against the couch and her head was thrown back against the cushion, mouth open and leaking drool. Kakashi snorted and nudged Obito to get him to look up from the ribbon he had been very studiously tying in a bow.

Obito scowled and looked up, no doubt to deliver a loud and mildly drunk complaint. Kakashi jerked his head at Rin. Obito’s eyes traveled over to her and Kakashi watched as Obito’s face morphed into an expression of such deep tenderness that it made his own chest ache.

“She’s been tired lately with all the planning,” Obito whispered softly. “My family is a wedding nightmare.”

As Kakashi watched Obito watch Rin, he felt a vulnerable question pushing its way to the forefront of his mind. “Obito, how did you know when you had serious feelings for Rin?”

Obito tore his eyes away from Rin and looked at him. Kakashi waited for the teasing or the jokes, but instead Obito just looked thoughtful.

“What do you mean? I don’t think I’ve never not been obsessed with Rin. Don’t you remember how obnoxious I was when we were kids?”

“Yes, I remember your little binder of pictures of her and all those weird little facts about her.”

Obito chuckled. “God, I had forgotten about that. It’s probably still around here somewhere. I better burn it so she doesn’t find it before the wedding and show it to all our friends.”

“But those weren’t…” Kakashi trailed off, trying to find the words for what he wanted to express. “Those weren’t real feelings. That was just infatuation—a crush. How did you know when that became something real?”

Obito considered that for a moment, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on his knee. “I guess that happened at some point around college. I would walk into rooms and just feel so... excited when she was there. I mean—that happened when it was just a crush, but this was different. It was like things kind of just slid into focus when she was around, you know? It was a comfortable kind of feeling. Not butterflies or whatever. It was just… nice.”

Kakashi hummed in understanding. A small smile started playing at the corner of Obito’s lips.

“Then I started walking to rooms she wasn’t in, and I would try looking for her in them. I’d be thinking about whether or not she would like things that were on the menu even if she wasn’t there to eat them, or if she would have complained about how close we were sitting to an air vent... It was like this little running dialogue going on in my head—like I was having this conversation with her all the time.”

Kakashi pressed his lips together tightly and tried not to think too hard about the wave of feeling rising in his chest. “And did that go away then? When you finally started dating?”

Obito laughed quietly. “No, not really. But then at least I could talk with her about it. The dialogue stopped being something that lived only in my head.”

He looked at Kakashi thoughtfully. “You know we’re always going to be here for you. Us getting married doesn’t change that, and you don’t need to be in your own relationship to be happy or whatever. It’s just nice to have that conversation with another person, always going on in the background. It makes life a little less lonely.”

“Thank you,” Kakashi managed. “I appreciate that.”

Obito grinned. “Growing up and getting married makes you sappy. Why don’t you stay here tonight? It can be like old times.”

Kakashi rolled his eyes as he hauled himself to his feet with Obito. “Old times? It’s been three months. I still have stuff in my old room.”

“Yeah, okay,” Obito agreed, quietly collecting their shot glasses while Kakashi screwed the lid back on the bottle. “But a lot has happened, wouldn’t you agree?”

Kakashi did have to agree.

* * *

Sakura sighed as she trudged back to her apartment building. She had gone to a library early that morning to catch up on the work she had simply decided to not do on Friday. She had more than earned that break, but she had also been too wrapped up in the developing situation with Kakashi to have focused on anything productive. He had texted her last night to tell her that he would be spending the evening at Rin and Obito’s to help with wedding planning. She had tried hard not to sulk while she cuddled with Pakkun on the couch, but she hadn’t been very successful. It was infuriating that even just a night apart would make her so upset.

They were both pretending that sleeping curled up around one another on the couch was completely normal, and Sakura couldn’t decide if she was relieved or furious. She knew on some level that the feelings she had been developing for Kakashi were Very Significant, and she wasn’t quite ready to confront them. But then again, not feeling ready to confront feelings didn’t always mean they shouldn’t be dealt with.

The feeling of waking up pressed against his chest, his arms loosely wrapped around her, warm sun filtering in through the window, Pakkun curled up at their feet—

She cut off the train of thought with a huff of breath as she reached the apartment building. She let the door slam shut behind her as she made her way to the mailroom. Something was supposed to come from her parents this week, and she really hoped it was food. She was feeling ready to _eat._

Hope flickered in her chest when she saw a large box in their mail cubby. The box must have arrived on Saturday. She eagerly read the top and then scowled. It was for Kakashi. If it was food she would be taking some for herself. She slid the box into her arms and immediately staggered off to the side with a grunt. Was someone mailing Kakashi bricks? Rocks? Weights?

The smart thing to do would have been the put the box back where she had found it and let Kakashi haul it up the stairs when he got back later that night, but Sakura had never considered herself a quitter. She gritted her teeth and limped towards the stairs with her new burden, deciding that it was a matter of principle.

By the time she was halfway up the stairs, she was tempted to just abandon the box and save herself. Her arms were burning and her breath was coming in short pants. This might have been an indictment of how little she actually exercised, but she was too furious and fed up to pursue that line of thought further.

By the time she reached their apartment door, she had decided that Kakashi would be yelled at later, regardless of the fact that he had not actually asked her to lug his package up the stairs. She kicked the door open with a bang against the wall and stumbled over the doorstep. Then she watched in utter horror as the package tumbled straight out of her arms and exploded open on the floor.

“Shit,” she yelled as she kicked the door to the apartment shut behind her and looked at the giant mess she had made. She changed her mind—Kakashi would be allowed to yell at her instead.

She knelt and began gathering together the debris, which she realized was just a massive pile of books. At first that checked out as normal to her—he was getting a graduate degree in books and he always had his nose buried in one. Then she realized she had created a stack of five of the same book.

She stared at the uniform stack for a moment. Why would Kakashi need more than one of the same book? She checked the spine—it was a mystery novel that she vaguely recognized from her wanderings around bookstores. Maybe these were copies for students in the class he was a TA for?

As she slowly sorted the books, she realized there were a few others—a trashy romance novel, another that looked vaguely serious and postmodern. She stared at the three stacks of books before her, and then flipped over a slip of paper that had fallen out of the box. It was a return shipping label.

Kakashi had been sent stacks of brand-new books that he was meant to send back. With some trepidation, she checked the shipping address on the original box. It was from a publishing house.

“Oh my god,” she breathed.

Suddenly she heard the sound of a key in the door behind her and she came to the terrifying realization that she was still sitting on the floor of the entranceway and going through Kakashi’s stuff. Somehow she had the sense that he would be less than thrilled about it, but it was too late to try and hide the evidence of her pawing through his mail. Pakkun trotted out at the sound of the door opening and joined her on the floor.

Sakura winced and closed her eyes, waiting for the fallout. The door swung open and then clicked shut. Sakura opened one squished eye to peer up at Kakashi. He was untying his bandana and somehow that just made her feel guiltier. He hadn’t worn his bandana around the apartment since they had woken up together. She wondered if this would change that.

“Itwasamistake,” she managed to blurt in a single breath. “Theboxwasheavyanditfell.”

Kakashi blinked down at her, and then his eyes traveled to the three stacks of books sitting beside the dented and busted box. “Oh,” he said blankly.

“I’m really sorry! I shouldn’t have hauled it up in the first place but I thought I was strong enough—”

“It’s fine,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the books. “What was in the box?”

Sakura stared at him as if he were an idiot and then remembered she wasn’t exactly in a position to be snarky. “Um, you mean, other than the books? Or are you asking something else?”

He just continued to stare at the books as he reached down to scoop up Pakkun, who had been pawing his foot. “I mean, what kind of books were in the box?”

Sakura began to realize what he was asking her. “Books you wrote,” she said quietly.

He winced. “And there we are,” he said dryly as he patted Pakkun’s head. “I suppose it was too much to hope that you wouldn’t have figured it out.”

“But seriously,” Sakura said as some excitement began to overshadow the guilt. “You _wrote these_?”

He lowered himself down to sit across from her on the floor, resting his back against the wall behind him and plunking Pakkun down in his lap. “Yup.”

“That is a huge fucking deal!”

A corner of his lips curled up in a lopsided and wry smile. Sakura resisted the urge to reach out and trace it. “It really isn’t,” he said.

“You got all of these published at some point! Explain to me why that isn’t a huge deal!”

He shrugged and rumpled Pakkun’s ears. “It is all just a matter of following the genre conventions. The same thing sells, over and over again. Not that any of these are bestsellers or anything—but there is a kind of… template one just has to follow.”

Sakura stared. “So you just… copy things?”

He chuckled. “In a manner of speaking. I don’t plagiarize, but you are rewarded for following a certain formula or style in publishing.”

“So you’re like a serial copier, just churning out random books? When said that you had a talent for copying things when we wrote the medical paper, you were teasing me?”

He grinned. “Is it teasing if you weren’t aware it was teasing?”

“I hate you,” Sakura snapped as she brandished a book at him. “There are three books here! Aren’t you like filthy rich? Why are you slumming it here?”

He snorted. “Authors aren’t paid as much for their books as you think they are.”

“But you could be—” Sakura gestured wildly, searching for words “—a homeowner or something! A real adult!”

“No,” he said with amusement. “I could not own a home. I’m paying tuition for graduate school—”

“Why are you even in graduate school? You’re learning how to write books when you’re already writing books!”

He shrugged again. “I still have lots to learn. I like being in school.”

“You like being in school,” Sakura repeated, deadpanning at him with incredulity.

“Well, some of us don’t treat school like an opportunity to explore the limits of the human body—”

“Has a class ever forced you to read your own book?”

The fist hints of smugness unfurled across his face. “Once,” he admitted. “It was the pretentious one.” He reminisced for a moment. “They all thought I’m far smarter than I actually am.”

“I hate you,” Sakura repeated, looking back down at the mystery novel she still held in her hands. “Why do you use pseudonyms? Why not publish under your own name?”

“The things I write are my business. I don’t want people knowing.”

Sakura gazed at the book in her hands. “I’m going to read this,” she decided. “Today.”

His face paled. “Absolutely not,” he snapped, making a grab for the book. “These are to be signed and sent back—”

“Why not,” Sakura cried, shoving him back with her foot. “I can finish it before you send it back!”

“Because even _I_ don’t like those books and _I_ wrote them,” he snapped as he pushed a disgruntled Pakkun to the side so he could grab the book from her hands.

“Well then, what do you write for yourself?”

He paused in dumping all the books back into their damaged box to give her an odd look. “What do you mean?”

“I mean clearly you’re just copying whatever genre conventions you have an eerie ability to nail, but that can’t be all you write. What do you write for yourself? Have you ever published it?”

He stared at her for a long moment, some unnamable feeling traveling across his face before it went blank again. He gave her a small smile with his eyes. Sakura was still floored by the novelty of being able to see the smile on his lips as well.

“I do write for myself,” he conceded. “But that is private. Though I shouldn’t expect that to deter you, mail plunderer.”

“It was an accident,” Sakura cried as he hauled himself to his feet, lifting the heavy box of books with an infuriating ease. “It fell onto the floor as soon as I walked in!”

“Uh huh.”

“Really!” She jumped up and joined Pakkun in trailing Kakashi to his room. “Come on, just one book! Please! Please! I won’t say anything mean about it!”

Kakashi peered at her over his shoulder. “I don’t care if you say or simply _think_ the mean things—you are not getting your greedy little gremlin hands on one of these books. Not a single one.”

Sakura gasped in sheer outrage. “How _dare_ you!” She watched Kakashi open his door and nudge his way in with the large box. “Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll just order my own copy and waste my own precious money, which you seem to have plenty of.”

“I’ll just steal it out of your mail,” Kakashi said blandly. “A precedent has been set.”

“I hate you,” she cried as he dumped the box on his desk and returned to look at her from the doorway. “I hate you so much!”

He gave her a crooked smile that made her stomach flip. “I hate you so much, too, Sakura.”

With that the door swung shut and Sakura was left fuming outside it. She stomped into the kitchen and yanked out the French press. She had never been so close to either jumping or murdering a man before.

* * *

Several hours later, Sakura was beginning to feel her brain turn to mush as she read the same paragraph of her textbook over and over again. The coffee was not helping, nor were the frequent snacks. When she heard the door to Kakashi’s room open, she kept her nose buried in her textbook, determined to ignore him. She heard slow footsteps approaching and pausing in front of her. She kept her head down even as Kakashi delicately cleared his throat.

“I noticed Pakkun’s bedtime toy wasn’t in my room. Where did he sleep last night?”

Sakura kept her eyes down and fixed on the page in front of her. “He slept on my bed last night. He seemed lonely.”

There was a long pause as he seemed to digest that. “Oh,” he finally said.

“Oh,” she parroted back, angrily flipping her page.

She heard Kakashi leave for a moment before he returned.

A book was gingerly slipped over her open textbook and into her field of vision. Sakura’s head snapped up. “You mean I can read this? You’re sure?”

Kakashi gave her a tentative smile as he shrugged noncommittally. “You don’t really deserve it given that you only found out I had written it after smashing open my box like some dumpster raccoon, but it seemed important to you.”

Sakura flushed. “It wasn’t my fault.”

Kakashi just sighed and sank down on the couch next to her. “Right, because you were forced to carry the heavy box up the stairs.”

“I was being nice!”

“You were being stubborn.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Just know that I appreciate this.”

Sakura caught a small smile on his face before he had raised his own book to cover it. “I expect compliments. Many compliments.”

“I’ll give them to you,” she said, trying to smother her own small smile. “If it isn’t awful.”

He shot her a dry look above his own book as they both settled in to read. Without allowing herself to think too hard about it, Sakura swung her feet onto the couch and shoved them under the side of his leg for warmth. Kakashi didn’t seem to notice or mind.

But she noticed when he unconsciously leaned his elbow against her leg half an hour later.

She didn’t mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise lol kakashi writes books! stay tuned for some dressed up shenanigans at some point in the future! i'm being relentlessly corny at this point and I'm just letting it happen OOPS
> 
> thank you for the lovely comments that feed my soul n make me feel aliveee!

**Author's Note:**

> Am I STILL procrastinating on finishing Buried? Yes, absolutely. Have I already written three chapters of this? Yes, absolutely. Did I create a whole giant yearning™ playlist for this already? Yes, absolutely. If u want to see me fall apart real-time, I just made a new tumblr @sunshinemellow-fic. 
> 
> Idk, I wanted to try a modern AU out and see how it felt! I'm seeing this as a longer fic, simply bc I love all the cheesy living together situations. Fun fact: someone not telling me they owned a dog before they moved in DID happen to me during college! It wasn't her fault though--my roommate was subletting to her and didn't think it was a big deal that she owned a big lab who would have to live in a tiny 700 sq ft apartment. I also have 0 ability to handle confrontation, so I just rolled with it and pretended everything was totally fine! This was how my inner anger goblin was reacting internally when externally I was just like "super nice to meet u. cool dog. :^)" 
> 
> Please let me know if you have feedback / ideas for future chapters! Thanks for reading (and if u are someone who reads Buried, I swear that will be done by the end of this week).


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